[Senate Hearing 114-752]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 114-752
OUR EVOLVING UNDERSTANDING AND RESPONSE TO
TRANSNATIONAL CRIMINAL THREATS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JUNE 16, 2016
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web:
http://www.govinfo.gov
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
28-584 PDF WASHINGTON : 2018
____________________________________________________________________
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office,
Internet:bookstore.gpo.gov. Phone:toll free (866)512-1800;DC area (202)512-1800
Fax:(202) 512-2104 Mail:Stop IDCC,Washington,DC 20402-001
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
BOB CORKER, Tennessee, Chairman
JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland
MARCO RUBIO, Florida BARBARA BOXER, California
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
CORY GARDNER, Colorado CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware
DAVID PERDUE, Georgia TOM UDALL, New Mexico
JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut
RAND PAUL, Kentucky TIM KAINE, Virginia
JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
Todd Womack, Staff Director
Jessica Lewis, Democratic Staff Director
John Dutton, Chief Clerk
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Corker, Hon. Bob, U.S. Senator From Tennessee.................... 1
Cardin, Hon. Benjamin L., U.S. Senator From Maryland............. 2
Brownfield, Hon. William R., Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau
of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, U.S.
Department of State, Washington, DC............................ 3
Prepared statement........................................... 4
Responses to Additional Questions for the Record Submitted to
Assistant Secretary Brownfield by Senator Corker........... 26
Responses to Additional Questions for the Record Submitted to
Assistant Secretary Brownfield by Senator Shaheen.......... 28
Responses to Additional Questions for the Record Submitted to
Assistant Secretary Brownfield by Senator Rubio............ 30
(iii)
OUR EVOLVING UNDERSTANDING AND
RESPONSE TO TRANSNATIONAL
CRIMINAL THREATS
----------
THURSDAY, JUNE 16, 2016
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:31 a.m., in
Room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Bob Corker,
chairman of the committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Corker [presiding], Flake, Gardner,
Isakson, Cardin, Menendez, and Kaine.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BOB CORKER,
U.S. SENATOR FROM TENNESSEE
The Chairman. The Foreign Relations Committee will come to
order.
This morning, we will look at how we are moving beyond the
war on drugs to understand the broader challenges of
transnational organized crime and what strategies can be
effective in combating this threat. While illegal drugs and
crime associated with them are devastating communities on both
sides of our southern border, it is not yet clear how
successful huge investments made over the decades have been in
eradicating supply and production.
The bottom line is this. Where the rule of law is weak or
nonexistent, transnational criminal organizations will prosper
and engage in corruption.
In 2011, the Obama administration issued a strategy to
combat transnational organized crime. This was an ambitious,
aspirational strategy that sought to mark an evolution in
thinking. Now, nearly 5 years later, we need to ask what is
working and what is not so we can get this right moving
forward.
Our witness today is Ambassador Bill Brownfield, who is a
strategic thinker with long, practical experience. We welcome
him and look forward to his testimony and our discussion.
With that, I will turn to our ranking member, our
distinguished ranking member, Senator Ben Cardin.
STATEMENT OF HON. BENJAMIN L. CARDIN,
U.S. SENATOR FROM MARYLAND
Senator Cardin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for
convening this hearing on transnational crime.
The world has changed and so has transnational organized
crime. I think it is important for us to have an update as to
where we are. President Obama's 2011 transnational organized
crime strategy has been there for a while. Is it working? Do we
need to do more?
We need an update, and I hope today that, Secretary
Brownfield, you will share with us how we are doing in regards
to that strategy.
Organized transnational crime, we have seen many of the
results of that. We have had hearings on trafficking on human
beings, on wildlife, on weapons, on drugs. We have seen
transnational organized crime and its financial crimes against
us, particularly on cyber.
I am particularly proud of the work being done in my own
State of Maryland on cybersecurity dealing with the effects of
transnational crime, the work at Fort Meade where we have our
cybersecurity command, and many private companies working in my
State in regards to these issues.
There is a clear nexus between government corruption and
transnational crime that I think is pretty clear. When you take
a look at how transnational crime spreads, you find areas in
which there is corruption and where they can deal with their
expansion of their own activities.
Then, Mr. Chairman, the human cost of this, we talk about
the impacts of dealing with transnational crime, but the impact
of this, the trafficking of drugs into America, in my State, in
every State in the Nation, we see record numbers of addictions.
So it is affecting our communities directly, as well as the
criminal elements and what they do.
We certainly have seen that in the trafficking of migrants.
In April, 500 people died alone in the Mediterranean on one
capsized trafficking boat.
So there is a human cost to this.
Of course, this is big business. The numbers are
astronomical. Just in the trafficking of refugees in 2015, it
was about a $5 billion to $6 billion enterprise.
So it is a huge amount of resources that are being taken
out of our productive economy through organized transnational
crime, and we need an equal response to it. And I look forward
to hearing from our witness.
The Chairman. Thank you for your comments.
Today, our witness is Ambassador William Brownfield, the
Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of International Narcotics
and Law Enforcement Affairs. We had a long meeting last week to
go through many aspects of this problem, and I thank him for
being here today and sharing his knowledge, but also his
thoughts about how better to attack this.
If you could, if you could keep your comments to about 5
minutes, that would be great. We look forward to questions.
Without objection, your written testimony will be entered
into the record.
With that, have at it.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. WILLIAM R. BROWNFIELD, ASSISTANT
SECRETARY OF STATE, BUREAU OF INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS AND LAW
ENFORCEMENT AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ambassador Brownfield. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking
Member Cardin. Thanks for the opportunity to appear today to
discuss our evolving understanding in response to transnational
criminal threats.
Gentlemen, if I were asked to describe the current
strategic threats from transnational crime, I would mention
two.
First is our priority from the last century, drugs. We must
today manage a strategic transition from cocaine to heroin. We
have made great progress on cocaine. U.S. consumption is down
more than 50 percent, but heroin abuse is exploding. Our
international challenge is to work the solution with the
Government of Mexico, the source of most heroin in the United
States, and I can report that we are working well together,
meshing our domestic heroin abuse reduction plan with Mexico's
new national heroin plan.
But we must not ignore cocaine. In 2 years, cocaine
production in Colombia has doubled, and the U.S. is the
traditional market for Colombian cocaine.
Colombia is understandably focused on its peace process to
conclude a 50-year armed conflict. Our challenge is to support
that process while at the same time pursue a serious drug
strategy for Colombia and Central American transit nations.
And we need to address challenges beyond our hemisphere.
Afghanistan produces more than 80 percent of the world's
heroin. Africa is a massive transit point for trafficking
networks moving north-south and east-west. And the Chinese
pharmaceutical industry produces much of the world's dangerous
new psychoactive substances, and some old ones like fentanyl.
The second and the greater strategic challenge for the 21st
century is that vast new field of organized criminal activity
that is neither drugs nor terrorism. We call it transnational
organized crime. It includes human smuggling and trafficking in
persons and wildlife, arms trafficking, illegal mining and
logging, cybercrime, intellectual property theft.
While each crime is distinct, they all share certain
enablers. They require corruption to run their trafficking
networks and money laundering to convert illegal revenue into
legitimized property. They all prey on week governing
institutions and benefit from poverty, poor education, and lack
of jobs.
In the increasingly globalized 21st century, transnational
organized crime may be the greatest law enforcement threat to
confront the United States.
We have learned lessons since first attacking the drug
crises of the 20th century, and we have changed our tactics
accordingly. One lesson is that many of the techniques and
technologies developed over 40 years to control illicit drugs
can also be applied to TOC.
But police operations, interdiction, lab takedowns,
arrests, while important cannot alone solve transnational
organized crime. Long-term progress means stronger law
enforcement and rule of law institutions, whether through
training, education, equipment, or technology.
And our partner institutions are not just the police. They
are also investigators, prosecutors, public defenders, judges,
and corrections officials. And we must construct the global
architecture, the treaties and conventions, the U.N. and other
international organizations, the cooperation and coordination
mechanisms that permit governments and law enforcement to work
together to address transnational organized crime.
Mr. Chairman, I have been in this business more than 37
years. I take the long view to solving our national security
challenges. When I joined the Foreign Service in 1979, the most
sophisticated tools available to law enforcement working an
international case were the telephone and a Rolodex file. We
have come a long way since then, but we have a long way to go
still.
Thank you, and I thank the members of the committee, and I
look forward to your questions and your comments.
[The Ambassador Brownfield's prepared statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ambassador William R. Brownfield
Chairman Corker, Senator Cardin, distinguished Members of the
Committee; thank you for the opportunity to appear before you to
discuss the Department of State's work to prevent transnational
organized crime from harming U.S. citizens and threatening our national
interests.
Since 2011, it has been my privilege to serve as Assistant
Secretary of State for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law
Enforcement Affairs (INL) which leads the Department's efforts to meet
this considerable challenge. INL is responsible for coordinating U.S.
government efforts abroad to increase international cooperation against
all forms of transnational crime. To support this mission, INL is
entrusted with developing and managing U.S. foreign assistance programs
in approximately 90 countries to strengthen the criminal justice
capacity of like-minded foreign governments. INL also coordinates and
funds the efforts of U.S. law enforcement agencies that provide
training and other assistance to our international partners.
Transnational organized crime encompasses a wide variety of
criminal threats, ranging from illegal trafficking in drugs, people and
wildlife to cybercrime and money laundering. Any serious ongoing
criminal activity that crosses international borders and involves three
or more people meets the legal definition of transnational organized
crime, and these activities threaten the interests of the United States
on three broad, interrelated fronts.
First, transnational organized crime's impact is felt directly on
the streets of virtually every community in America. Drugs, counterfeit
merchandise, and other contraband are illegally smuggled into the
United States every year, undermining our border security and
inflicting harm on society and individuals. Heroin, fentanyl, and
illicit opioids originating from abroad are perpetuating the national
opioid epidemic. Cyber-enabled fraud and other forms of crime victimize
American citizens of billions of dollars annually, and transnational
criminal gangs commit crimes in collaboration with their peers located
beyond our borders.
Second, American businesses and financial institutions are more
affected than ever before by the impact of transnational organized
crime. When international crime infiltrates legitimate commercial
sectors, our companies and workers are deprived of a level playing
field to compete globally. Markets for U.S. products are diminished,
prices are distorted, and consumers are exposed to additional risks
from unregulated (and in many cases unsafe) products. Counterfeiting
and piracy cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars annually and
expose consumers to dangerous and defective products. Transnational
crime also corrupts international financial institutions that supply
the credit and banking services that our global economy depends on.
Third, international criminals engage in a variety of activities
that pose a grave threat to our national security and the stability of
the global community. Corruption and the enormous flow of illicit
profits generated by criminal activity are serious threats to the
stability of democratic institutions, the rule of law, and sustainable
economies around the world. Once imbedded within the political
institutions of a society, transnational criminal networks weaken the
bonds of trust between citizens and their state. Governments corrupted
at senior levels by organized crime cannot be trusted to act as
reliable partners of the United States, or as responsible stakeholders
in the international community. The convergence of crime, corruption,
and weak governments can also devolve into failed states and ungoverned
spaces that provide a foothold for terrorism, insurgencies and
unchecked human rights abuses.
The Department of State has treated transnational organized crime
as a foreign policy priority for approximately the past forty years. We
started with illegal drugs. In the late 1970s, INL was created to
develop and manage international drug control programs. Our focus was
on eradicating drug crops in Latin American source countries. We had
some success with eradication, but in and of itself, it wasn't
sufficient; drug cultivation could be shifted to new areas where
governments had less authority. When it became apparent that
eradication wasn't enough, in the 1980s, we shifted our approach to
interdiction. And again, we had some successes, particularly in
reducing the flow of cocaine through the Caribbean. But traffickers can
adapt and evolve quickly, budgets to support interdiction are limited,
and the flow of drugs shifted over time.
These early years of experience taught us some valuable lessons
with wider applicability to all other forms of transnational organized
crime. We learned that we could displace criminal activity in certain
regions for a time and that we could displace the leadership of
particular criminal organizations and by doing so, bring about short-
term disruption to drug flows. But these were short-term palliatives,
not sustainable long-term solutions. Over the past two decades, with
support from successive administrations and bipartisan backing from
Congress, INL has recalibrated its work to focus on two mutually
supportive strategic objectives; helping partner governments build,
reform, and sustain judicial institutions that enhance the capacity of
their criminal justice systems; and developing the global architecture
necessary for cross-border law enforcement cooperation and preventing
corruption.
Our shift to institution building became more pronounced as the
threat of transnational organized crime evolved during the 1990s,
beyond drugs. As globalization accelerated with the end of the Cold
War, so too did the spread of transnational organized crime, along with
its attendant corruption. U.S. policy leaders recognized that the same
institutional shortcomings of vulnerable states allowed all manner of
criminal threats to expand across international borders. To deny
international safe havens to these criminal networks, our assistance
programs had to expand to focus on strengthening these institutions and
provide host governments with the ability to enforce their laws.
Developing strong and effective criminal justice institutions
requires a long-term commitment. Successful law enforcement operations
are satisfying, but strengthening institutions provides value for a
generation. All links in the criminal justice continuum--police,
courts, and corrections--must be capable of effectively delivering
justice, securing public trust and safety, and enabling international
cooperation.
This is not an easy task; if all links in this chain are not
addressed, sophisticated criminal organizations will exploit the
weakest link. More than half of INL's budget today directly promotes
sustainable institutions and criminal justice reform. Our goal is to
help partner nations gain the capabilities they need to effectively
sustain the administration of justice and the enforcement of their
laws. U.S. foreign assistance is always a development bridge, not a
permanent status quo. Our capacity building assistance is not intended
to create dependencies nor to replace host country responsibilities to
invest in developing and sustaining their own institutions.
This relates to another important lesson that INL has taken to
heart: host governments and their citizens must own the process of
reforming their institutions. It can't be driven by the desire of the
United States or other donors. INL's support for capacity-building is
directed by the requests of our international partners. No other
approach works; host governments determine what assistance they will
accept, and we do the best we can within available resources to work
with them.
Assisting international partners across the full range of criminal
justice sectors requires specialized expertise. INL has subsequently
expanded its collaboration with a wider range of implementation
partners. In addition to our longstanding partnerships with the
Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, INL has expanded its
range of Federal implementers to include the Administrative Office of
the U.S. Courts, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Federal Bureau of
Prisons, and the Law Library of Congress. INL has also developed over
110 partnerships in 25 states and the District of Columbia with police
departments, district attorneys' offices, public defender services,
departments of corrections, and maritime ports. Our state- and local-
level partners possess unique technical, linguistic, and cross-cultural
expertise and represent the diversity of America's law-enforcement and
justice sector communities. These partnerships are a win-win: our
assistance programs benefit from the knowledge and expertise of active
police officers, corrections officials, and legal professionals, and
state and local partners expand their ties with countries of interest
to their communities and gain new professional development
opportunities.
This approach to long-term institution building on a global scale
requires patience and a sustained political will by both host
governments and our own. In many countries where INL operates, police,
judicial, and correction institutions have been historically
underfunded, with poorly-paid and trained staff operating under
antiquated laws and codes. The institutional improvements that our
programs support require generational change. Most progress takes place
in incremental steps that seldom attract news headlines; more criminal
investigations resulting in trials; more trials brought to successful
verdicts; and more humane and secure prison facilities.
In Central America, INL's support for institutional reforms to law
enforcement coupled with an emphasis on transparent, accountable
policing in high crime locations is resulting in decreased rates of
violent crime and improved relationships with communities. In Ukraine,
we helped plan, equip, train, and roll out an entirely new police force
in just ten months, covering 34 cities in every region in the country
and credited in polls as the third most trusted institution in the
country after the army and the church. Globally, INL-funded programs
trained over 1,000 officials to combat wildlife trafficking in 2015,
benefitting nearly 30 countries.
Colombia has served as a showcase for where our approach can
succeed given sufficient resources, patience, and host nation political
commitment. Fifteen years ago, before the advent of U.S. assistance
under Plan Colombia, large areas of the country were beyond the writ of
the state, controlled by terrorist and criminal organizations. Today,
while many challenges remain, the Colombian state is not only able to
provide its citizens greater security and access to formal institutions
of justice, but the country now exports law enforcement and justice
sector assistance to its international partners.
In addition to capacity building, INL has achieved substantial
progress in developing frameworks for cross-border cooperation.
Beginning in the late 1990s, thanks in large part to U.S. leadership,
and working largely from U.S. models, the global community has
developed a series of groundbreaking treaties that promote
international law enforcement cooperation and reduce the advantage that
criminals gain from crossing borders. The UN Convention against
Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), which entered into force in
2003, is the first legally binding instrument that commits countries to
common criminalization of a wide range of serious organized crimes and
to cooperating with one another on criminal justice enforcement. It is
supplemented by three Protocols to combat trafficking in persons,
migrant smuggling and illicit trafficking in and manufacturing of
firearms. The United States has used the UNTOC as the basis for mutual
legal assistance and extradition cooperation with other countries on
over 470 occasions, making the treaty a valuable tool for our criminal
justice practitioners.
We've achieved similar progress in creating global standards
against corruption, the great enabler and worst consequence of
organized crime. The UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) entered
into force in 2005 and provides a complementary framework to address
both the supply and demand for corrupt international practices. The
UNCAC lays out requirements for preventive anti-corruption measures,
criminalization of bribery and other corrupt practices. These
requirements are only as good as governments' ability to enforce them,
so INL also works with international law enforcement networks such as
INTERPOL to target perpetrators of corruption and their ill-gotten
gains. INL also leads efforts within the G-20 to prevent corrupt
officials from traveling internationally and enjoying the benefits of
their crimes.
These UN benchmarks have been complemented by treaties developed in
other multilateral organizations that support global efforts to prevent
transnational crime. The Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime,
for example, provides a model for countries to develop domestic
legislation and provides a platform for increased cooperation in
cybercrime investigations. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF)
serves as the global focal point for concrete cooperation to counter
money laundering, which greases the wheels of international criminal
activity. Taken collectively, this legal framework provides the
foundation necessary for systemic, standardized law enforcement and
judicial cooperation between governments. INL is committed to using all
levers of diplomacy to encourage our international partners to take
advantage of this framework, for the protection of their own citizens
and interests as well as ours.
In conclusion, we believe we are achieving progress and pursuing
the correct strategy by working with like-minded governments and other
partners to promote sustainable criminal justice institutions and
durable civilian security. We have made great strides in developing an
international legal foundation and normative framework for common
approaches to combatting transnational organized crime. But I am not
suggesting the problem is solved or that we will ever be able to
declare victory. Criminal threats emanating from abroad are always
going to exist, and we will need to remain constantly vigilant as they
metastasize and evolve. Our goal is to continue to reduce the ability
of transnational organized crime to operate with impunity, and
ultimately reduce it to a manageable threat that can be contained by
our partners domestically.
The Chairman. Thank you very much for your testimony and
for the time you have spent on this for 37 years, and for the
meetings that we have had in the office.
I want to make sure people heard fully what you had to say.
Ninety percent of the heroin that comes into the United States
is not just coming from Mexico, it is produced in Mexico. Is
that correct?
Ambassador Brownfield. That is a good rough estimate, Mr.
Chairman.
The Chairman. So it is not a situation of having a southern
border where things would naturally migrate through. It is
actually being produced there.
I think the point you wanted to make sure that you got out
is that you are working very closely with the Mexican
Government to try to deal with this issue and feel like you
have a good partner in that regard. Is that correct?
Ambassador Brownfield. That is also correct, Mr. Chairman.
I think very highly of the Attorney General of Mexico who has
been placed in charge of the Mexican Government's efforts.
The Chairman. So what is it that is specifically causing 90
percent of the heroin that Americans are consuming to be
produced in Mexico?
Ambassador Brownfield. Mr. Chairman, that is a very good
question. I am going to offer you two, three, maybe even four
elements of an answer.
One part of the answer is that the same Mexican trafficking
organizations or cartels that for the last 20 years or so have
been moving the product from South America, mostly cocaine,
through Central America and into the United States discovered
as the cocaine demand reduced in the United States that they
could replace much of that through heroin and made a systematic
effort to build that market. So it was Mexican organizations
building the market.
Second, they discovered that having a vertically integrated
system, which is to say controlling the entire process from
cultivation, through laboratories that convert opium poppy into
heroin, through the transport and logistics networks, and
eventually then the revenue, the money laundering networks,
worked to their advantage.
Third, you have geography, which is to say Mexico is a lot
closer to the United States than is Afghanistan.
And fourth, in a sense, Mexico became the victim of
Colombia's successes. Colombia used to produce about half of
the heroin consumed in the United States. But thanks to some
very serious and successful efforts by the Colombian
Government, Colombian heroin has dramatically reduced in the
U.S. market, and Mexican heroin has replaced it.
The Chairman. So what has happened in Mexico is not unlike
any international business enterprise, vertical integration,
proximity to customer, has caused the Mexican production to
dramatically increase just like any other legitimate business
might act. This is obviously illegitimate. They are adopting
the same principles. Is that correct?
Ambassador Brownfield. That is exactly right, Mr. Chairman.
As I like to say often, drug trafficking organizations are
criminal and are vicious, but they are not stupid. They are
very good businessmen.
The Chairman. So my staff had some comments, my great staff
had some comments about some of the positive things that were
happening in Colombia. However, I declined to say those in my
opening comments because of what you just said, and that is
that a 50 percent increase in cocaine production is occurring
right now in Colombia.
What is driving that? After all the years of effort, after
positive effort by many administrations, what is driving that
50 percent increase?
Ambassador Brownfield. Actually, Mr. Chairman, I might even
nudge your figure up from 50 percent to closer to 100 percent
over the last 2 going on 3 years.
I think it is driven by several factors. One, to be blunt
and honest, is the focus and attention of the Colombian
Government on their peace process and, to some extent, a
willingness or a desire not to take steps that would complicate
that peace process. The FARC guerrilla movement is today, as it
has been for more than 30 years, one of the world's leading
drug trafficking organizations.
Second, the Government of Colombia no longer has the same
eradication program that they had for the last 20 years or so.
They have stopped all aerial eradication, and they have not
replaced it with ground-based manual eradication.
Now this is partly a decision of them telling us to stop
aerial eradication. But it is also partly a function of the
Colombian coca growers having realized and discovered that
certain zones in Colombia would not be sprayed, zones right
near national frontiers and borders, or zones in national
parks, or zones in indigenous reserves or in FARC-controlled
areas.
The net effect of that is this explosion of coca
cultivation.
The Chairman. Let me just ask you--this is not what we want
to hear. I know we had the President up here recently, and all
of us were glad to see him and certainly want to continue the
partnership we have had. But is this in some ways an
accommodation to the FARC in order to end up in a more peaceful
situation that you see occurring?
Ambassador Brownfield. Mr. Chairman, I think it is part of
that, but that is too simple of an answer, and I want to give
complete credit to the Government of Colombia, who I admire
enormously, who I think have made extraordinary effort at great
cost and with great courage in terms of what they are doing.
But I do think we have to acknowledge that as the peace
process and its negotiations have developed over the last 4
years, one of the elements of Colombian Government policy that
has not been maintained at its previous level is
counternarcotics and eradication.
The Chairman. So I want to move on to the next person, out
of respect for everybody here on the committee. I do in the
next round want to focus on the tremendous increase in
production that is occurring right now in Afghanistan and the
highly lucrative production of fentanyl that is occurring in
China, which is actually so much easier to do, so much cheaper
to make, and yet so much more lucrative. That is probably our
next challenge as a Nation.
With that, Senator Cardin.
Senator Cardin. Mr. Chairman, I want to follow up on your
point.
Ambassador Brownfield, we very much appreciate your
service. We know the work that you did in Colombia, and we
appreciate that very much. We now need to see how we can deal
with a more holistic approach on drugs coming into America.
I just want to concentrate 1 minute on heroin because I
have been throughout my State, and I have seen the impact of
heroin addictions in Maryland. It is in every part of my State.
There is no part of Maryland that has been immune, no community
has been spared. My understanding is that this is true
throughout America. The heroin addiction issues are incredibly
impacting all of our communities.
So I am pleased to hear your report that, from the
governmental sector, you are confident that our relationship
with Mexico is productive, and that we are working on that
issue. But you have also acknowledged a 100 percent increase in
the heroin production in Mexico. So clearly, we have to be more
effective in our policies in Mexico to stop the production.
Now, there are a lot of other issues involved in the heroin
use here in the United States. We have the opioid abuses, et
cetera. So we need a multiple approach. But from your
experiences in Colombia, I would hope that we would have more
aggressive expectations on cutting off the source of production
in Mexico.
Ambassador Brownfield. That is a very fair hope on your
part, Senator, and I want to feed into that hope. I am
optimistic. But by the same token, I have been in this business
long enough to know that, to have an impact, you have to think
in terms of years, not in terms of months. I would use Colombia
as an example.
Plan Colombia launched in 2000. Until the year 2007, no
one, no one in this institution of the United States Congress
or the executive branch, would have been prepared to say we
have made serious inroads and impact on cocaine production in
Colombia.
By 2007, 2008, 7 to 8 years after the start of the most
aggressive program we have ever pursued in the Western
Hemisphere, we began to see that impact. I lay that out as a
concern as we deal with Mexico.
As we are working with Mexico, we have to remember that we
have our own part to play in this, and it is a serious part.
The Office of the National Drug Control Policy director has
developed the heroin abuse reduction plan. And the objective of
that plan is to reduce the demand for the product in the United
States.
The Mexican Government, in my judgment, has been very good
about law enforcement efforts focused on interdiction and
attacking and taking down laboratories. The challenge that we
have right now, Senator, is going after the tens if not
hundreds of thousands of acres in Mexico that are currently
under cultivation for opium poppy.
That is the challenge. That is what I am trying to work
right now with the government.
Senator Cardin. Obviously, that is extremely important, and
we want to help any way we can.
Could you just share with us a better understanding of the
criminal elements that are bringing the heroin into the United
States, its relationship to traffickers in regards to humans?
Give us an understanding. Are we talking about Mexican cartel-
type operations? Are we talking about American connections? Are
we talking about other parts of our hemisphere, outside of our
hemisphere, that are involved in these transnational criminal
syndicates that are effectively bringing the drugs and perhaps
people into the United States?
Ambassador Brownfield. Senator Cardin, I will offer you my
views. Obviously, U.S. law enforcement has a right to correct,
adjust, fine tune, or modify anything you are about to hear
from me.
First, it is my opinion that the Mexican drug trafficking
organizations have developed in the last 10 to 15 years in a
way that basically supplanted previously the Colombian drug
trafficking organizations, which dominated the movement of
product, particularly cocaine, from South America to the United
States.
They are overwhelmingly, within Mexico, Mexican
organizations that are comprised of Mexican citizens.
Do they also take advantage of other forms of trafficking
in order to make money? Yes, they most assuredly do. Whether
that is trafficking in persons or firearms, whether it is
trafficking in contraband or other forms of criminal activity,
they engage in it.
Their usual approach is to manage the process themselves
from within Mexico and get the product across the United States
border. That is done by the organizations themselves and their
personnel.
Once they have delivered to the ultimate destination in the
United States, by which I mean the city, at that point, they
have a local partner. That partner may or may not be Mexican.
It may be an all-American gang. It may be a mix.
But that is the point they shift from transportation and
wholesale into retail, where the product then moves from the
criminal organization, the Mexican cartel, to some other
Americanized version.
Senator Cardin. Just so I understand, you are confident
that the leadership in Mexico fully understands this and is
working with us in order to root out these criminal elements
within Mexico?
Ambassador Brownfield. I am, Senator, although I do say
that this has taken a number of years, and the reason is that
it is a change from the perspective of Mexico to how they
address drug-related issues.
Until the heroin crisis--and you used that word correctly;
we have a heroin crisis in the United States--until that
crisis, the Mexican position was roughly that by the accident
of geography, they were located in between the producer states
further down to the south in South America--Colombia, Peru,
Bolivia--and the consumer states located to their north in the
United States or in Canada or in Western Europe.
As we have shifted from cocaine to heroin, they have had to
confront the reality that the entire problem is centered there.
It has taken time. I believe we are moving in the right
direction. I continue to offer you optimism, but with a careful
dose of please do not hold me to a ``solve this problem by
Friday'' standard.
Senator Cardin. I will follow up in the second round.
Thanks.
The Chairman. Senator Isakson?
Senator Isakson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I represent the State of Georgia, the capital of which is
Atlanta, which is ground zero for Mexican drugs coming into the
United States. I mean, that is where it comes to get
distributed either through Hartsfield International Airport,
the interstate highway system, the Port of Savannah, whatever.
My impression is that operational control of the border
between the United States and Mexico, and the land therein, is
pretty much controlled by the Mexican drug cartels. Am I right?
Ambassador Brownfield. You are talking to a native Texan,
Senator. I would not go that far. I would say, however, on the
south side of the border, there is a tremendous amount of
penetration and influence, including several of the major
Mexican border cities.
Senator Isakson. And the increase in the heroin trafficking
is because of increased demand for heroin in the United States
of America. Is that not right?
Ambassador Brownfield. It certainly is right that you would
not have nearly the amount of heroin crossing the border if
there were not demand, although I would suggest to you that
much of this demand was manufactured and artificial, which is
to say the original demand was caused by perhaps
overprescribing pain opioids as pain medication, which
developed some demand. And then the cartels substituted say $40
a hit, which you had to do by using a prescription drug, to
give the same buzz for 10 bucks with straight heroin. They then
created, if you will, a market for heroin.
Senator Isakson. Do you think the human trafficking and the
drug trafficking coming into the United States out of Mexico
are tied to each other?
Ambassador Brownfield. I do in very many instances, yes.
Senator Isakson. In fact, the human traffickers are used to
get the drugs into the United States over the border, are they
not?
Ambassador Brownfield. I do believe that as well.
Senator Isakson. How much cooperation are we getting from
the Mexican Government to try to stop that?
Ambassador Brownfield. I believe we get good cooperation on
a case-by-case basis and in specific locations.
I believe, across-the-board, the corporation is good with
Mexican federal authorities along the border. I think the
cartels are so skilled and so well-informed that they can
identify and spot the weak points, so that, in a sense, even if
we had 99.9 percent of a tightly controlled border, they would
find that one-tenth of 1 percent.
That is the problem. That is the challenge that we are
dealing with.
Senator Isakson. I get the impression that the enforcement,
the cooperation--I am not talking just about Mexico here. I am
talking about in the macro sense. The cooperation that foreign
governments give us on the human trafficking issue is less than
helpful. Is that correct?
Ambassador Brownfield. It depends upon the country, but I
would not disagree that in a lot of cases there is a reluctance
to acknowledge that they have a trafficking in persons problem.
Senator Isakson. Our chairman and ranking member have done
a great job of really focusing on the human trafficking issue,
which is a real tragedy.
I go back to my State of Georgia and Atlanta, in
particular, and we are ground zero for where a lot of those
people are brought, thinking they are getting into America, but
end up becoming sex slaves, drug traffickers, or worse, or
domestic servants, or whatever they might be.
But I just do not get the impression that internationally
or within this hemisphere that we get the cooperation we should
from other governments to really stop the human trafficking. It
seems to be growing rather than diminishing.
Ambassador Brownfield. I do not disagree with that,
Senator. You are going to accuse me of pandering, but I am
going to make one additional statement. I have signed a
memorandum of understanding, and I signed it the first time
about 2 years ago, with a large city police department. It is
called the Atlanta Police Department. They have a division that
does hate crimes as well as crimes involving trafficking in
persons, which are usually sexual- or gender-based crimes. And
they are the best trainers that we have anywhere in the world
for many of the reasons that you yourself have just laid out.
Part of the challenge, and, therefore, part of the
solution, is how we can project the way we deal with these
problems here in the United States in a real-world way with
police that are overseas in countries that have the same
problem. That is part of our challenge.
Senator Isakson. Do not ever apologize to the Senate for
pandering. We do it all the time. [Laughter.]
Senator Isakson. But on the subject, and you and I, I do
not think, have ever met, so I want to thank you for teeing up
what was going to be my last comment about the Atlanta PD and
what they are doing in terms of the gang issue, which in terms
of human trafficking and drugs are the enablers in the United
States for a lot of the cartels in Latin America and in Mexico.
It is the flow of information of these gangs that can be
the best mechanism we can use to stop a lot of trafficking and
drug distribution. That is my impression. Do you agree with
that?
Ambassador Brownfield. I do agree with it. In fact, I try
to say it as often as I can. We have signed 110 memoranda of
understanding with State and local law enforcement institutions
throughout the country. And my message is this is not just in
our interests--we get excellent trainers to do programs
overseas--it is in their interests, because as they engage
overseas in training missions, they are developing the contacts
with foreign police. They are developing the intelligence
sources that can in turn be played back to help them do their
jobs on the streets of America's cities and communities,
whether it is gangs or trafficking organizations or others that
are involved in international, transnational organized crime.
Senator Isakson. On that point, Mr. Chairman, law
enforcement, particularly in the southeastern United States,
has developed such a database that the tracking of these gang
members and the flow of these gang members is becoming very
traceable in a very instantaneous type of approach through a
database that has been assembled. It is really helping us to
begin to get our arms around this.
So I appreciate you bringing the APD up. Thank you.
Ambassador Brownfield. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Isakson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Menendez?
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for your service.
In 2011, the administration released a strategy on
combating transnational organized crime with a stated end goal
of reducing from a national security threat to a manageable
public safety problem, the effects of organized transnational
crime.
The strategy outlines five key objectives, identifies
dozens of priority actions for implementation. The five
objectives of the strategy are protecting U.S. citizens and
interests, supporting partner nations to address corruption
related to transnational crime, protecting the U.S. financial
system from exploitation by organized crime, targeting
transnational criminal networks that pose a threat to U.S.
national security, and building international cooperation
through multilateral fora and public-private partnerships.
In your testimony, however, you noted that INL, and I am
quoting, ``has recalibrated its work'' and focused on two
mutually supportive strategic objectives, helping partner
governments build, reform, and sustain judicial institutions
that enhance the capacity of their criminal justice systems,
and developing the global architecture necessary for cross-
border law enforcement cooperation and preventing corruption.
So does that represent a strategic shift by the
administration? I know that you noted that you are not ready to
declare victory, but did circumstances portend defeat? I would
like to understand what the recalibration means for U.S.
policy. Has our end goal changed? Have the ways to achieve it
changed?
Ambassador Brownfield. Senator, here is the way I would
answer that perfectly legitimate question, I would say----
Senator Menendez. I only ask perfectly legitimate
questions. [Laughter.]
Senator Menendez. At least I think so.
Ambassador Brownfield. I would say that INL is part of a
larger group of institutions. We obviously have the Federal law
enforcement organizations. We have the Department of Justice,
the Department of Homeland Security. We have those that are
involved in the counterterrorism efforts as well.
We, therefore, have a piece of the national strategy on
transnational organized crime. This was about the time, you may
vaguely recall, since you chaired the hearing that foolishly
recommended eventually my confirmation in this position, that
this was about the time I came into this position. And my
decision at that time was, as INL, let us not try to do all of
this strategy. Let us pick those elements where we have the
greatest ability to influence in a positive way.
And we picked institution-building, because, in a sense, it
is what we do across-the-board around the world and developing
the global architecture, which is a code for the conventions,
the international agreements, the international organizations
and mechanisms that allow governments to coordinate and
cooperate around the world.
We are actually working the other issues as well, but my
guidance to my people 5 years ago was let's pick those areas
where we can have the most impact, and where other parts of the
United States Government would not naturally be doing as much.
Senator Menendez. I ask the question, and I want to follow
up with a different part of your testimony, because, certainly,
protecting the U.S. financial system from exploitation, and
certainly targeting transnational criminal networks that pose a
threat to U.S. national security I would think would be
essential elements of any such plan that we would want to
pursue.
So the two stated goals that you described that you have
narrowed it down to may tangentially help that, but I am not
sure it directly does.
So let me ask you this. You say that INL support for
capacity-building is now, my emphasis, directed by the requests
of our international partners. Host governments and their
citizens must own the process of reforming their institutions.
It cannot be driven by the desire of the United States or other
donors.
Again, it may be more than semantics. But where you say
this cannot be driven by the desire of the United States, I
absolutely think it should be driven by pursuing our own
national security interests and projecting our own values. No
one else is going to do that for us.
So I ask these questions because many of us here are trying
to give this and whatever future administration the tools it
needs to accomplish the goals the administration says it has
set, and I hope the administration has not reset INL's goals to
only work within the confines of relationships that are not
adversarial.
So what happens in many countries--certainly, there are
several, the 90 or so that fall within INL's orbit--where the
government or others in control do not want our help because
that would interfere with their profit-taking or other personal
interests.
Are we seeing ourselves, then, as barred from working with
other institutions and NGOs and others in those countries that
could move toward creating the type of systems that we would
want to see?
Ambassador Brownfield. Senator, I think, in a sense, you
and I are reaching the same conclusion, but we are saying it in
different ways.
Of course, we want to cooperate with those governments and
in those countries that represent, if you will, the greatest
transnational organized crime threat to the United States of
America. My point in my statement was, if we do not have buy-in
or genuine commitment by the host government, we probably are
not going to succeed. That is one of those lessons I have
learned over the last 37 years.
Now, we certainly can encourage the buy-in. We can nudge
the buy-in. We can try to direct and guide the buy-in.
But I had, you will recall, I had the somewhat dubious
pleasure of being the United States Ambassador for 3 years to a
country whose government was determined to have an adversarial
relationship with us. I will not identify it other than to say
its capital is located in Caracas.
I could not have delivered one single successful program in
terms of institution-building in those 3 years in that country
because the government would not cooperate.
That is the point I am trying to make. With some countries,
our strategy has to be a periphery strategy. What can we do
around the edges to address those issues that represent a
threat to the United States? What we want to do is work with
the government, with its commitment and its buy-in for these
programs, so that they themselves are supporting what we are
trying to accomplish, what we are putting resources into, and
what we are doing the training for capacity-building.
Senator Menendez. Mr. Chairman, I would just--I appreciate
your courtesy.
Then in countries like Venezuela and others, this is not
unique to them, where they are operating in a way for which
there is significant operations in transnational crime, then we
must find other ways, if we cannot induce them to participate
and have them institutionally decide to move in a direction
that is both good for their people and in our national
security, then you have to find other ways, it seems to me, to
pursue actions that will get them to that.
I look forward to working with the chair and the ranking
member to think about those ways, because otherwise we abdicate
large swaths of countries in which we are undermined in our
overall goal.
The Chairman. I appreciate that. As a matter of fact, I
would say, based on my trip to Venezuela that took place not
long ago, I cannot imagine anything constructive that they
would be willing to work with us on under the existing
government. So I agree with you. Thank you.
Senator Kaine?
Senator Kaine. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Secretary Brownfield. I wanted to ask you some
questions about cyber, and I may get to one about fentanyl.
When we talk about cyber so often in this body, in this
committee, but I am on the Armed Services Committee as well, we
so often talk about it as a state vs. state. Our cyberthreats
tend come to from state actors. I am just intrigued by your
position at State.
Talk to us a little bit about cyber activities you see from
transnational criminal organizations rather than direct state.
What is the magnitude of this threat? What are trends in terms
of cyber activity by criminal organizations that we need to be
aware of?
Ambassador Brownfield. Senator, I think you have already
put your finger on the three areas where cyber and call it
misuse or unlawful use of cyber constitutes a threat to the
United States. One is state-to-state, and it is a matter of
intelligence, for all intents and purposes, either intelligence
collection or intelligence manipulation.
The second is terrorism, which it is connected to but we
have treated it as a different issue from the rest of
transnational organized crime, and that is the use of cyber for
the purpose of supporting in some way, shape, or form terrorist
activities and terrorist operations.
The third is pure criminal activity, which is to say the
use of cyber for the purpose of stealing or in some way
illegally enriching oneself or one's organization.
My suggestion at the end of my oral statement was, as we
look at transnational organized crime into the 21st century, we
had better be careful because as we make progress on other
elements, we may discover that it winds up being the greatest
not just law enforcement, but even security challenge to the
United States of America.
That is the challenge that we have before us. The challenge
that I have is dealing with two different communities as well
as my own kind of law enforcement and criminal justice
community and figure how we can mutually support or borrow from
one another in terms of technologies, techniques, and systems
that we have developed for dealing with these issues.
They are similar but they are different. As you well know,
based upon other committees that you sit on, if you are working
an intelligence issue or a terrorism issue, you are not
necessarily thinking about developing a case for prosecution in
a court of law. If you are dealing in my area of criminal
justice, that is exactly what you are dealing with.
Then the question is how much we can borrow from one
another before we have contaminated the product. Either we have
contaminated their intelligence or counterterrorism product, or
they have contaminated ours.
Those are the sorts of challenges that I am dealing with
every day on the matter of cyber.
Senator Kaine. You mentioned in your written testimony,
just one quick sentence: ``The Council of Europe's Convention
on Cybercrime, for example, provides a model for countries to
develop domestic legislation and provides a platform for
increased cooperation in cybercrime investigations.''
Is the United States actively engaged with that council or
similar multinational efforts to specifically focus on
cooperation vis-a-vis cybercrime?
Ambassador Brownfield. Senator, we have adopted the
convention of the Council of Europe. We did it not because we
are members necessarily of the Council of Europe or that we
were a European nation. We did it because, as we looked at the
entirety, if you will, of international conventions on the
matter of cybercrime about 5 or 10 years ago, we thought this
was the best product out there.
Our view was, rather than reinvent the wheel, rather than
creating something else from scratch, bringing in 196 different
governments, all of whom will have their own particular point
of focus or interest or concern, let's use the existing
document.
There are some that disagree. The Government of China tells
me on a fairly regular basis, which is to say every time I talk
to them, that they would like there to be a new international
convention on cybercrime. I can understand their position, but
my own view is, let's not throw away a working vehicle if, in
fact, with minor modification, it can be made to run well for
the next 50 or 60 years.
Senator Kaine. One last question, if I could, if you were
to give--that was international cooperation--inside the U.S.
family, if you were to grade the level of cooperation between
the different agencies that touch this, the three kinds of
cyber areas you mentioned, whether it is state-to-state or
terrorism or pure criminal activities, you are talking DHS, you
are talking State, you are talking DOD, you are talking intel
agencies, what grade would you give currently to the level of
coordination among the parts of the Federal family that touch
upon this important issue?
Ambassador Brownfield. Yes, that is an unfair question. But
I have been in this business long enough that I am willing to
take a risk and say things I should not say probably.
I would put it this way, Senator. We have probably moved
from a C- up to a B- in the last 5 years. That is to say that
we are moving in the right direction.
What we are pushing against are decades-long, institutional
biases and approaches from specific communities. We are pushing
against some degree of stove-piping, which is to say each
organization has its own capability and are not particularly
anxious to relinquish control over that and mix it in with
somebody else. And we are dealing with different desired
outcomes or objectives.
And it is a tough challenge. The easy answer would be to
tell you or allow you to say to me you guys are just stupid,
you cannot figure it out, and do it on your own. It is a bit
more than that. This is complicated. This is an issue where we
are bringing together different communities that have
traditionally, over the last, oh, 300 or 400 years, not worked
very closely together.
In some ways, may I offer one ground for hope from the
State Department side, part of the solution is the embassies,
at least those embassies that are in the middle of the
particularly dangerous zones, there it is the United States
Government in microcosm. We have a mini president with
presidential authorities. We call him or her the ambassador.
And when you boil it down to a smaller group of people, there
they actually are able to work through some solutions, which we
then find, you flip them back to headquarters, and we try to
use the same solution here.
It is actually one of the reasons why I have some optimism
in this field.
Senator Kaine. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
If you would, Mr. Brownfield, would you expand a little bit
on what is occurring in China as you did in our office.
Ambassador Brownfield. China today, Mr. Chairman--and this
is not evil. This is not bad.
China is today perhaps the world's largest pharmaceutical
industry. I read a figure recently that there are 160,000
pharmaceutical companies in China. That strikes me as high, but
I read the figure. Do not ask we where I read it, but I can
find it at some point, if I have to.
China then confronts a situation where they have an
incredibly diverse, extremely energetic pharmaceutical industry
that is not anxious to be regulated. The Chinese Government has
moved in the right direction in a number of areas. Within the
last 6 months, they have moved to register 116 new psychoactive
substances. This is the stuff that the pharmaceutical
industries of the world can [unintelligible] at a rate of
several hundred per year with a registration rate in the United
Nations system of somewhere between 20 and 30 per year. You can
do the math, in terms of what the impact in that regard is.
One of the areas which we have consistently discussed with
the Chinese Government, Senator Cardin, is fentanyl, where we
have noted that fentanyl is produced in many different forms or
analogs in China. They have moved to register, which is to say
to control, to require a license for the production of many
forms of fentanyl, but not all.
Your question, Mr. Chairman, suggests this answer, which is
an accurate one, the overwhelming majority of fentanyl that is
consumed in the United States of America, which also produces
fentanyl, by the way, for legitimate medical purposes, but very
little of that slides out into the black market. The
overwhelming majority of fentanyl that is consumed in the
United States of America as part of the heroin crisis is
produced in China.
The Chairman. And explain to those who are watching the
difference in profitability.
Ambassador Brownfield. It is phenomenal, if you assume that
the cost of producing fentanyl is not significantly different
from the cost of producing heroin. From a rough estimate
perspective, that is not a bad assumption, Mr. Chairman. A gram
of fentanyl, a gram of heroin, would probably end up being
about the same.
The gram of fentanyl will produce a buzz, a high, whatever
the noun is you wish to use for it, about 100 times, 80 to 100
times, as powerful as morphine, and 40 to 50 times as powerful
as heroin. So you just do the simple math here.
Add to that the fact that the transport of fentanyl can be
as simple as taking an envelope and putting several thousand
doses of fentanyl in the envelope, sealing it, putting stamps
on it, and putting it in the mail. The delivery is much, much
simpler than the delivery for heroin.
The Chairman. If you will, to explain to those who are
listening to this, the size of an equivalent cocaine delivery,
if you will, that has the same potency that you just described.
You are talking about half a shoebox for what you just
described. Is that correct?
Ambassador Brownfield. Yes. That is basically right. I
would say that a half shoebox of fentanyl would provide you the
same amount of buzz, in purely psychic and drug-related terms,
as 25 full shoeboxes of heroin. That is the difference that we
are looking at.
That is why an envelope produces as much as a substantial,
like multi-kilo, shipment of heroin.
And fentanyl in and of itself, if properly used, Mr.
Chairman, doesn't kill you. It is still used in the American
medical community under obviously tight control by an
anesthesiologist. The problem that we have is when the fentanyl
is mixed with heroin and the user either does not know he has
fentanyl at all or has bad fentanyl or has miscalculated, given
the potency of the fentanyl, how much he can absorb.
That is what is killing Americans at the rate they are
dying these days in the heroin crisis.
The Chairman. I look forward to another round of questions
where we can talk a little bit about authorities that you might
like to have to do your job better.
But with that, Senator Cardin?
Senator Cardin. Just to underscore that point, in my
meetings that I have had in Maryland, the fentanyl issue has
been highlighted as the growing problem, and where we get most
of our overdose fatalities. So it is a very, very serious
problem today in Maryland and around the Nation.
I do not think we are going to have time today to
understand this, but I think you are suggesting that the
source, China, is one of the largest sources that is coming
into the United States. Is that correct?
Ambassador Brownfield. Yes. The overwhelming majority.
Although much of it comes in via Mexico, but that----
Senator Cardin. The criminal elements that are bringing it
into the United States are similar to the heroin trafficking?
Ambassador Brownfield. They are. In fact, more often than
not, Senator, they are exactly the same criminal organizations.
Senator Cardin. But they are using it as a source? Rather
than homegrown poppy in Mexico, they are doing the synthetic
drug in China?
Ambassador Brownfield. My view, as of right now, as to how
this is happening is that the heroin itself is grown and
produced in Mexico, that which is consumed in the United
States. The fentanyl is produced in China, much of it, probably
most of it. It is then processed, shipped through Mexico, where
it is then put into the pipeline, the same pipeline that moves
heroin into the United States.
Senator Cardin. Here I hope that your relationship with the
Mexican authorities is helping us with our capacities to try to
stop that flow from China to Mexico to the United States.
Ambassador Brownfield. Yes. In fact, again, Senator, the
Government of Mexico has worked with us. Fentanyl is a
controlled substance in Mexico. It is not openly available so
that it can only move through Mexico through criminal means.
So we are starting from a positive starting point. We
still, obviously, have a lot of work to do.
Senator Cardin. You said in your oral presentation, you
have it in your written presentation, the direct relationship
between corruption and transnational organized crime. You talk
about governments that are corrupted at the senior level are
ripe for this type of activity, and you talked about the impact
it has within the country itself.
So I want to hone down, just for a moment, on the
corruption issues we have in regards to the heroin or the
synthetic drugs coming into the United States. There are
problems in Mexico and the United States. Can you just tell us
the degree to which corruption is entering into this and what
we should be aware of?
Ambassador Brownfield. Sure. Senator, corruption is the
great enabler for drug trafficking, quite frankly, for any kind
of trafficking, criminal trafficking, in the world, to such an
extent that I would say that if you did not have corruption,
the trafficking networks would not work. They could not
operate.
The corruption literally is corruption of individuals. They
might be customs officials. They might be border officials.
They might be police or airport or seaport officials. In other
words, the corruption that allows them to move their physical
product through the chokepoints--because any trafficking
network will have to chokepoints. They usually are at borders.
They might be at airport borders or seaport borders. But they
have to move their product through there.
As they move into money laundering, they have to deal with
bankers and others in the financial institutions who will be
aware of what is moving through but willing either to
participate or look the other way. Those are corrupted
officials.
At the end of the day, if a trafficking organization does
not have a network of corrupted officials, it will not succeed.
Do we see them in Mexico? Yes, of course, we do. As you
well know, you will find them, perhaps in different numbers,
but you will find them in the United States of America as well.
We are not immune to corruption.
And in countries with a lower income level than in the
United States, the possibility of a multibillion-dollar company
or cartel offering a sum of money that might equal 100 years'
salary to a police officer or a customs official solely to look
the other way is a tremendous inducement. And it is why
corruption, in my opinion, has to be one of our highest
priorities as we address transnational organized crime, perhaps
for the rest of this century.
Senator Cardin. Let me just point out that Secretary Kerry
recently announced a $70 million program in regard to fighting
corruption. I would just urge that we maybe look at additional
resources here, and I thank you very much for highlighting that
point.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Senator Gardner?
Senator Gardner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you for being here today and your testimony.
I wanted to follow up and perhaps talk a little bit further
about Mexico as well. I had the opportunity to visit with many
in their government this past November. We talked a little bit
about the Merida Initiative and some of the efforts taking
place there.
How effective do you think the Merida Initiative has been?
Since 2008, we spent about $1.5 billion in taxpayer money. How
has that been? I know they are making some changes as well in
Mexico on judicial reform. Can you maybe talk about both the
effectiveness of the initiative and perhaps how their changes
in judicial prosecutions will affect transnational crime, drug
trafficking issues, et cetera?
Ambassador Brownfield. Senator, I am going to answer your
question in two parts. First, I am going to work through the
four so-called pillars of the Merida Initiative and offer my
views on how successful we have been on each one.
One pillar was a modern 21st-century border between the
U.S. and Mexico. I think we have made tremendous progress
there. I think they have equipment, they have capabilities,
they have people that they did not have before.
We have reached a point now where we are focusing much more
effort on Mexico's southern border, that with Guatemala and
Belize, because much of what we are trying to control and
manage is the flow of migrants and people as well as drugs
through Mexico.
Second is taking down criminal organizations. They have
done a very good job of taking down the leadership of a number
of cartels. A critic or skeptic would push back and say, yes,
but they seem to be replaced, and the cartels have not
disappeared. Some have. Some have not. I would give them at
least a passing grade in that regard.
Third is building stronger institutions. I do believe that
the federal Government of Mexico today has far better, more
professional, better trained and equipped institutions than
they did at the start of the Merida Initiative 7 or 8 years
ago.
The challenge now, in my opinion, is trying to take that
capacity and expand it into the 32 states as well as the
federal district of Mexico City, since Mexico, like the United
States, is a federal state.
Finally, building stronger communities, particularly up
along near their northern frontier with the United States, I
mean, the truth is the Mexican economy is what drives that.
When the economy is going well, the communities are better.
When the economy is down, the communities are less strong.
That is taking the four things that we described as our
Merida Initiative and giving them a report card.
Where are we across-the-board?
First, the realities are changing. We are dealing today
more with transnational organized crime. When we started
Merida, we were focused on largely cocaine and, to a lesser
extent, heroin. We have to adjust Merida to reflect that
reality.
Second, we were dealing with a different Mexican
Government. That government left office at the end of 2012. The
now not-so-new-government has a right to determine its own
priorities. I think we are making progress there, but we have
to continue to work that.
At the end of the day, my assessment is we are
substantially better in our bilateral relationship with Mexico
today than we were at the start of the Merida Initiative. That
in and of itself gives good value to the United States of
America.
Senator Gardner. One of the concerns I picked up on,
particularly when it comes to drug trafficking issues, was
concern from some that decriminalization efforts of marijuana
in the United States was hurting our efforts to stop drug
trafficking out of Mexico. Can you talk about that perhaps?
Ambassador Brownfield. Yes, I will do it carefully,
Senator. I am aware of who I am speaking to right now.
I will say that it is impossible for me to go to Mexico and
talk to the Mexican Government without hearing from virtually
everyone I talk to the seeming contradiction between us seeking
to cooperate with them in terms of controlling dangerous drugs
while, in our own Nation, four States of the union have now
proceeded to legalize, by which I mean the State Government has
a direct financial interest in the cultivation, production,
sale, purchase, of cannabis.
I understand their message. I do not seek to dictate to the
people of Colorado, Oregon, or Washington State, or Alaska,
what they will decide to do. I do think I understand the United
States Constitution and the Federal system of government.
I say that it complicates my life internationally. And I am
going to leave it at that, because I do acknowledge the people
of Colorado have every right in the world to determine the laws
that they wish to be governed by.
Senator Gardner. I have run out of time here, but perhaps
we could have another conversation about Burma. I recently
visited there, and we spent a tremendous amount of time talking
about the drug situation there. The 2016 report, International
Narcotics Control Strategy, talked about Burma continuing to be
a major source of opium and exporter of heroin second only to
Afghanistan.
So perhaps we could submit a question for the record for
you in terms of Burma collaboration, what is happening with the
new democratic government in Burma, in terms of the production
eradication efforts in trafficking, and then I would like to
talk a little bit further and get more detail on the
trafficking of drugs in Burma by the Burmese military and their
complicit role they play in this ongoing effort.
So I would like a little bit more about that at some point.
Ambassador Brownfield. Senator, I welcome the question,
because, I have to tell you, the timing I think is very good.
My read of Burma right now is this new government actually is
ready to do some serious things on drugs and counternarcotics
that they have not been willing to do for 30 years.
Senator Gardner. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The Chairman. Thank you. You have been a great witness, and
we thank you for the commitment and time and knowledge on this
topic. Let me just wrap up.
I want to go back to Colombia for a second. When the
President was here, everyone was spiking the ball, if you will.
Negotiations on FARC were progressing and people were happy and
all of that.
But I guess as I prepared for this hearing today, it feels
to me like the reason things are progressing politically is
they are easing up on the very thing we began working on so
hard, and that was production within their own country.
I just want to make sure I leave here with a proper
understanding from a witness who has lived and breathed this.
Ambassador Brownfield. Mr. Chairman, I am going to give you
an honest answer, but a careful answer. I want to be careful
because I said it before and I will say it again, I admire and
respect tremendously the Government of Colombia. Until he
became President, I would have called the current President of
Colombia a friend of mine. You obviously cannot be a friend to
President. They are far too distinguished to permit something
as low and common as common friendship.
But I know and admire Juan Manuel Santos enormously. I
respect what is trying to do. He is trying to bring to
conclusion a 50-year armed conflict that has killed tens of
thousands of Colombian citizens. I not only respect that, I
support it and endorse it.
It is my view that it should be possible to pursue those
negotiations to reach that conclusion without having to walk
the clock back to where we were 8 or 9 years ago, in terms of
drug cultivation and production in Colombia. It is my view that
it should be possible to continue to eradicate or have the
threat of eradication so that thousands of campesinos, many of
them encouraged perhaps by the FARC guerrillas, do not believe
that it is open season on planting as much coca as they might
wish.
We have opened a discussion with them. It is a good
discussion, because these guys are our friends. We have been
partners and allies with them now for more than 16 years under
Plan Colombia.
I do not mean to be critical of them. I mean to state an
obvious fact. The amount of cocaine being produced in Colombia
has doubled in the last 2-plus years. That is kind of a
disturbing fact, since most Colombian cocaine traditionally and
historically is transported to the United States.
We need to work together to figure out how to deal with
eradication, which is to say to stop the actual cultivation; to
deal with taking down the laboratories, which convert the raw
coca into cocaine; to go after the criminal organizations,
those organizations, not necessarily the FARC guerillas, but
the criminal organizations that are trafficking the product;
and then, finally, how to interdict the product as it is moving
from Colombia to North America; and how to attack their
financial networks.
It should be possible to do that. I intend to do that. You
have my absolute word of honor that there will not be an
opportunity of mine when I am talking to the Government of
Colombia when I do not make this point and have this discussion
with them.
The Chairman. But my sense is, for what it is worth, we
missed that opportunity when he was here last. And there was a
lot of happy talk here about Plan Colombia.
What I hear you saying, with all your niceties regarding
the government and your friendship with the existing President,
is that he is not pursuing both tracks in the way that he could
be, that he is pursuing the relationship with FARC and ending
what has certainly been a blight on their country for a long
time, but he is not pursuing as heavily the issue that has been
at the core of this, and that is production of cocaine in their
country that is coming to the United States in the way that he
could.
Ambassador Brownfield. Mr. Chairman, I am not going to walk
that far down this road. I am going to go back to where I left
it before.
We are talking. We are moving in the right direction. How
we got there, I am going to leave that to the historians and
the people far smarter than me.
What I will say is that I believe there is now a
realization we have a serious problem, and we are now talking
to our friends and partners and allies in the Colombian
Government as to how to solve this problem.
And on that, I feel pretty good. We are all entitled to our
own views as to how we got into this situation. The only point
that I am making is, I believe we are working on a route out of
it. We know how to do it. For the love of Pete, it is what we
were doing from the year 2000 until the year 2012, 2013, very,
very effectively. And I am determined that we are going to do
it again.
That is the way I would respond to your valid comments.
The Chairman. We are the authorizing committee for the work
that you do. Are there some authorities that we could provide
to you that would cause your job to be easier, to be
successful?
Ambassador Brownfield. Mr. Chairman, I am going to answer
that question this way. Obviously, as one Assistant Secretary
among several, and one department among a bunch in the Federal
Government, I will not express a view as to what the executive
branch believes it needs in terms of new authorities.
I will state the following, however. The last authorization
that INL received was more than 20 years ago. Since that time,
the United States has moved from a cocaine crisis to a heroin
crisis. We have moved from a drug-focused international crime
effort to a larger transnational organized crime effort. We
have moved from an overwhelming focus on the Western Hemisphere
to having to deal with places like Afghanistan and Myanmar.
Are there areas that were not addressed in the early 1990s?
Yes, undoubtedly there are. And I would welcome a discussion
with this committee in the months ahead.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Flake?
Senator Flake. Thank you for your testimony.
If we can talk about sub-Saharan Africa for a bit, it has
many of the characteristics that make it prone to transnational
terrorism and financing and criminal networks operating.
Let's talk about East Africa for a minute with al-Shabaab.
What evidence do we see there of transnational criminal
networks operating?
Ambassador Brownfield. Huge evidence, Senator. In fact, I
mentioned it in my oral statement, and I would say it again
right now. Africa is, from my perspective, one of my three
principal focuses, foci, as I look outside of the Western
Hemisphere, in terms of direct criminal networks with direct
impact on the United States.
The reason is that two specific parts of Africa, West
Africa and south East Africa, have become transit points for
trafficking flows that are moving either east-west from Asia en
route to markets in Europe or North America, or north-south,
which is to say from, say, South America into West Africa and
then seeking market in Western Europe, if not flipping back
across.
We need to have focus on both of these from a pure
trafficking perspective. The problem that we have is weak
institutions in a number of countries in Africa, which make
them very attractive for multibillion-dollar trafficking
organizations.
We also have organizations like al-Shabaab or Boko Haram or
further up north Al Qaeda or the Islamic State, which are able
to corrupt and then use government institutions as well.
Africa, from my perspective, is a very important point of
focus without even going into the wildlife trafficking area,
which we have become engaged in more aggressively over the last
3 and 4 years.
Senator Flake. What are some of our strategies in East
Africa. Let's take it with al-Shabaab. There are concerns,
obviously. It is a transit point along the coast there.
Obviously, we have concerns. What are we doing?
Ambassador Brownfield. First, you have correctly summarized
the nature of the threat, and the nature of the threat is
product and criminal activity that originates, for the most
part, in South Asia, although the product may actually be
further up in Central Asia. Then it is transported from South
Asia to East Africa for, in a sense, transshipment.
That becomes a point where it is introduced into a north-
south access moving either to Europe or flipping across the
continent and moving into North America.
What we are trying to do is build institutions that are
better capable of addressing the problem, providing direct
support, operational support to existing law enforcement
organizations, and using vetted units or specialized units in
whom we have a great deal of confidence and are able to share
intelligence and information with, and ensuring that their
regional coordination and cooperation is such that permits them
to actually pass off or hand off movements or organizations
that are moving across borders and frontiers so that crossing a
frontier doesn't completely lift all of the danger to the
criminal trafficking organization.
And I would say that in East Africa, we are better today
than we were 5 years ago. We are still miles away from being
able to say that we are comfortable with and confident that
these countries and these governments can control their own
borders.
Senator Flake. Do we have any successes that we can point
to specifically in terms of cooperation with local officials
that has yielded benefits that are tangible?
Ambassador Brownfield. We have had several major drug
seizures, mostly heroin, coming in from Southwest Asia that
have been picked up, for the most part, at seaports, in some
cases at airports.
In fact, I will shoot you, if you wish, I will get you a
written summary of some of those success stories. We have also
taken down several of what I would call midsized trafficking
organizations in East Africa, although not the international or
global organizations. And we have had some success, some of
which has made the newspapers, in terms of reducing if not
shutting down the flow of what is one of Africa's great
criminal exports, and that is illegally trafficked ivory and
rhino horn. So I would suggest to you we do have some success
stories. They are not as many as I would like to be able to
report.
Senator Flake. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Secretary, you have been an outstanding witness. We
thank you again for your years of commitment to this issue. We
look forward to following up with you relative to some updates
that may occur that give you greater freedoms and flexibilities
to do your job.
I know that you have a hard stop for a meeting that you
need to attend, so thank you again for your time, both here,
but also in preparation for the meeting. And we look forward to
seeing you again.
There will be other questions that people will have in
writing, and we will keep the record open until the close of
business on Monday. If you could get to those fairly promptly,
we would appreciate it.
The Chairman. But thank you again. And with that, the
meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:48 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
----------
Additional Material Submitted for the Record
Responses to Questions for the Record Submitted
to Assistant Secretary Brownfield by Members of the Committee
responses to questions for the record submitted to assistant secretary
brownfield by senator corker
Question 1. The U.S. was able to help the Colombian government
strengthen the rule of law across its territory. There were of course
some key variables present, including Alvaro Uribe. Is that experience
actually replicable elsewhere? How, for example, can it be done in
Central America?
Answer. For nearly two decades, Colombia and the United States have
worked together to bolster rule of law in Colombia and throughout the
hemisphere, including by confronting transnational crime and minimizing
the harmful effects of criminal activity, including narcotics
trafficking. This partnership has demonstrated results: Since 2002,
Colombia has experienced an 89 percent reduction in kidnappings and a
48 percent reduction in homicides. Colombia has emerged as a supplier
of civilian security assistance and expertise through the U.S.-Colombia
Action Plan on Regional Security, whereby Colombian security officials
train and advise their counterparts throughout the hemisphere.
The situation our Central America partners face is similar, but not
identical, to Colombia's experience, requiring an assistance approach
tailored to the realities on the ground. Unlike Plan Colombia, our
engagement in Central America encompasses multiple countries with
differing levels of development. Success requires action from several
governments instead of one to strengthen rule of law throughout the
region. The Department identified three lessons learned from Colombia
that informed our general approach to the development of the Central
America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) and later the U.S.
Strategy for Engagement in Central America: 1) Dramatic change is
possible; 2) Partnership is essential; and 3) Enhancing civilian
security requires a sustained, comprehensive approach.
Our experience in Colombia, when coupled with similar lessons
learned from the Merida Initiative in Mexico, demonstrates that each
country is complex, nuanced, and requires an approach that harnesses
the entire breadth and depth of law enforcement, criminal justice, and
community violence prevention tools at our disposal. Lasting change
also requires a long term commitment on both sides. Our approach to
implementing the U.S. Strategy for Engagement in Central America builds
upon these past experiences, drawing from best practices and lessons
learned while adapting to realities and conditions on the ground. Many
challenges in the region are deeply entrenched, but they are not
insurmountable.
Question 2. Crime and insecurity are said to reduce GDP growth by
as much as 8% in some developing countries. In the past, Congress
enacted trade preferences for Andean nations both as an incentive for
cooperation on counter-drug operations and to boost legal commerce. How
can we best align policies to encourage sustainable economic growth
with efforts to combat Transnational Organized Crime?
Answer. The President's 2011 Strategy to Combat Transnational
Organized Crime highlighted transnational organized crime's
exploitation of poor governance, insecurity and corruption. Taken
together, these conditions enable the expansion of transnational
organized crime and impede the ability of international partners to
achieve sustainable growth. Although trade relationships are not within
INL's direct purview, the Administration and Department recognize that
many of the same conditions conducive for U.S. investment and trade can
also reduce the ability of transnational organized crime to operate. In
particular, countries must take effective steps to reduce corruption
and promote transparency and reliable rule of law; protect the
integrity of global supply networks to reduce illicit trade; provide
access to justice and formal dispute mechanisms; and protect
intellectual property rights from copyright infringements and piracy.
The Administration has pursued these objectives as part of its
trade negotiations, most notably in the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP). The TPP has established new standards for action against
corruption as part of a trade agreement, including commitments to
adopt, maintain, and enforce criminal laws to deter corruption by
public officials, to maintain codes of conduct to promote integrity
among public officials, to adopt laws criminalizing corruption in
accounting practice, and to effectively enforce anti-corruption laws.
Participants must ratify or accede to the United Nations Convention
Against Corruption and criminalize bribery of public officials. They
should also have a code of conduct in place for public officials and
take measures to decrease conflicts of interest; and take steps to
discourage illegitimate gifts and discipline officials engaging in acts
of corruption.
Transnational organized crime earns annual profits in the billions
of dollars from intellectual property rights infringement, and the TPP
also contains a chapter that promotes high standards of protection and
provides fair access to legal systems in the region to enforce those
rights. Drawing from and building on other bilateral and regional trade
agreements, it includes commitments to combat counterfeiting, piracy
and other infringement, including trade secret theft; obligations to
facilitate legitimate digital trade, including in creative content; and
provisions to promote development of, and access to, innovative and
generic medicines. For additional information on TPP or other trade
agreements, we recommend you contact the Office of the United States
Trade Representative.
Question 3. Transnational Organized Crime touches otherwise legal
industries. In our own country and elsewhere, contraband cigarettes are
trafficked by criminal organizations involved in other illegal
activities. An interagency report issued last December, entitled ``The
Global Illicit Trade in Tobacco: A Threat to National Security'', the
Obama Administration estimated that the illegal trafficking in tobacco
products costs government worldwide a total of $40-50 billion per year
in lost tax revenue. How big a problem is contraband tobacco and is it
a good example of how transnational crime is intertwined with legal
commerce?
Answer. The illicit trade in tobacco is a multi-billion dollar
business that fuels crime and corruption, undermines the rule of law,
and creates insecurity and instability around the world. As cited in
the U.S. interagency publication, ``The Global Illicit Trade in
Tobacco: A Threat to National Security,'' the World Health Organization
(WHO) estimates that, as of 2006, the world-wide tax loss to the black
market for illegal tobacco is $40-50 billion annually with illicit
tobacco products making up 10% of all cigarettes consumed worldwide.
Within the United States, where the illicit market is mostly contraband
cigarettes moving between states, a recent study by the National
Academies of Sciences estimate the annual tax loss related to the
contraband market in the United States to be $2.95 to $6.92 billion,
which represents 8.5% to 21% of the market or 1.24 to 2.91 billion
packs of illicit cigarettes.
The illicit trade in tobacco products demonstrates how
transnational crime can become intertwined with legal commerce. The
Financial Action Task Force concluded in their 2012 report ``Illicit
Tobacco Trade'' that large scale smuggling operations account for a
vast majority of the international illicit trade in cigarettes.
Organized crime groups have been engaged in cigarette smuggling for
decades and exploit taxation differentials and vulnerabilities in
supply chains and border security to make substantial profits.
Depending on the type of illicit tobacco product (contraband, cheap/
illicit whites, or counterfeit cigarettes), the point of departure from
the licit market to the illicit market varies. Contraband cigarettes
are produced legally and diverted into the illicit market when the
appropriate taxes are not paid--unusually at the wholesale or retail
stage. Cheap whites, or illicit whites, are also produced legally but
become illicit during the taxation and in transit stages. Finally,
counterfeit cigarettes are an illicit product at production.
__________
response to questions for the record submitted
to assistant secretary brownfield by senator shaheen
Question 1. How is the State Department partnering with other
agencies, like the Department of Homeland Security, on this cross-
cutting issue of counter-narcotics smuggling across our southern
border?
Answer. The State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics
and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) works with several U.S. federal law
enforcement agencies and the Government of Mexico to create a 21st
century border, one that facilitates legitimate commerce and movement
of people while curtailing the illicit flow of drugs, people, arms, and
currency across our southern border. INL programs strengthen security
at Mexico's southern and northern border crossings, points of entry,
and internal checkpoints to increase Mexico's capacity to stem the flow
of illicit drugs and counter the activities of drug trafficking groups.
In collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
Customs and Border Protection (CBP), INL trains Mexican Federal Police
officers to better respond to cross-border incidents and coordinate
operations with the U.S. Border Patrol. INL and the Department of
Defense (DoD) helped establish a cross-border communications network to
provide direct voice communication between CBP and Mexican Federal
Police along the U.S.-Mexico border, enhancing cross-border
coordination. INL and DHS are currently working to provide data and
video connectivity and to expand communication capabilities to state,
local, and tribal law enforcement agencies along the border. INL's
partnership with CBP has led to coordinated enforcement actions to
disrupt and degrade drug trafficking organization activities.
INL also partnered with CBP to provide canines and related training
to several Mexican agencies at the federal and state level. Mexican
canine handlers traveled to CBP's Canine Centers in El Paso, TX, and
Front Royal, VA, to receive training and enhance their interdiction
capabilities.
In collaboration with DoD, INL provided telecommunications
equipment throughout the border state of Chihuahua to enhance
communication and operational coordination for Chihuahua state police.
INL is currently working with DoD on a similar project to enhance radio
network coverage in Mexico's southern border region. This project will
improve the operations of Mexican agencies along the southern border by
allowing them to better coordinate enforcement and interdiction
activities.
In partnership with the Transportation Security Administration
(TSA), INL performed a comprehensive security assessment in several
airports throughout Mexico. These assessments will help guide future
programming to ensure compliance with international and TSA security
standards.
INL also partners with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to
enhance Mexico's interdiction capabilities. The DEA provides training
to augment Mexico's ability to identify, investigate, and interdict
clandestine heroin labs, and better prepare Mexican law enforcement
officers to dismantle them.
INL works also with the Department of Justice to strengthen Mexican
justice sector institutions and professionalize law enforcement at the
federal and state levels, developing effective tools to prosecute drug
traffickers, seize their assets, and limit their ability to influence
state institutions via corruption and threats of violence.
Question 2. Could you describe your Bureau's cooperation with the
Defense Department to counter transnational crime and narcotics
smuggling? To what extent do Defense Department authorities overlap
with State Department foreign assistance authorities? How should State
and DOD share the responsibility and resources devoted to building law
enforcement capabilities to combat transnational crime?
Answer. INL and the Department of Defense provide complementary
assistance to international partners under our respective authorities.
Under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended, the Secretary of
State is responsible for providing counternarcotics and anti-crime
assistance to foreign governments and international organizations, and
for coordinating all such assistance of the U.S. government (22 U.S.C.
2291). Many activities conducted under DoD's temporary counternarcotics
support authorities could also be conducted under INL's broader
assistance authority.
Presidential Policy Directive 23 (PPD-23), issued in April 2013,
governs the process by which the U.S. government coordinates Security
Sector Assistance (SSA), including to foster interagency policy
coherence and collaboration. The PPD requires the Department of State,
designated as the lead agency for SSA, and other agencies, including
the Department of Defense, to work together to coordinate SSA
activities, from planning, to formulation, through to implementation
and monitoring and evaluation to ensure that the U.S. is projecting a
coordinated foreign policy through our security assistance activities.
PPD-23 coordination between the Department of State and Department of
Defense is particularly important as Department of Defense authorities,
SSA funding levels, and U.S. military activities involving civilian
entities overseas have increased substantially over the past several
years.
In general, law enforcement capacity building should be civilian-
led and focused, rather than military. In some cases, DoD-led
assistance may be more appropriate given resources, security, or other
requirements. However, in such circumstances, all programming should be
subject to appropriate foreign policy oversight to ensure it advances
broader policy objectives and the development of the recipient's entire
security sector in the long term.
Question 3. Unfortunately, Afghanistan remains the world leader in
opium production, which is a critical source of revenue for the
Taliban. As the Afghan government confronts a militarily resurgent
Taliban, are there opportunities to undercut their ability to finance
operations by stepping-up Afghan counter-drug efforts?
Answer. Despite a difficult security situation, we are working
closely with the Afghan government and expanding our collaboration with
the U.S. Department of Defense to intensify our counternarcotics
efforts. In the last two years, the State Department's Bureau of
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) has worked to
support two specialized units of the Counter Narcotics Police of
Afghanistan--the Sensitive Investigative Unit (SIU) and the National
Interdiction Unit (NIU). These units partner with the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA), and have arrested individuals and
targeted production facilities that exist in insurgent-held areas. In
2015, the SIU and NIU conducted 309 operations, seizing 15.2 metric
tons (mt) of opium, 6.7 mt of morphine and morphine base, and 76 mt of
hashish. This year, the NIU arrested major Afghan trafficker Haji Watan
in Nangarhar, who was later sentenced to 17 years in prison. Also, on
May 13, on a single operation in Nangarhar, the NIU (with support from
a U.S. Special Forces unit) destroyed two tons of opium, heroin, and
partially processed morphine as well as two laboratories. On June 5,
the NIU executed search warrants on labs in Badakhshan province as part
of an airmobile assault, seizing 173 kilograms (kgs) of heroin and
morphine. Despite the finite number of security forces available to
fight both the insurgency and conduct counternarcotics operations, the
Afghan government understands the nexus between the Taliban and illicit
drug revenues, and has made an effort to apply pressure on traffickers
wherever security conditions permit.
Question 4. Much like the Taliban, Hizbollah in Lebanon is another
terrorist group that mixes its terrorist activity with criminal
activity. How are counterterrorism and counter-crime objectives
complementary and what are some examples of where we are working to
combat this convergence?
Answer. Terrorism and transnational organized crime, and the
instability, corruption, and violence they cause, pose threats to the
interests and security of the United States. Countering these
challenges requires reliable international partners with the
determination and capacity to uphold the rule of law. Through
collaborative assistance, the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law
Enforcement Affairs (INL) builds partner country criminal justice
capacity and the Bureau of Counterterrorism and Countering Violent
Extremism (CT) expands on this capacity to enhance skills specific to
the investigation and prosecution of acts of terrorism. Building the
capacity of the criminal justice sector to fairly and justly fight
crime increases public confidence in security forces and improves
government legitimacy, creating space and credibility to combat
extremism and terrorism. Anti-crime efforts often work to reduce
funding streams for terrorist activities.
In Lebanon, INL training for the Lebanese police, the Internal
Security Forces (ISF), the Ministry of Interior, and the Ministry of
Justice promotes increased skills in criminal investigation, police-
prosecutor collaboration, financial and cyber-crimes, forensic
capacities, crisis management and response, as well as improved
criminal justice data integration throughout the entire criminal
justice system. INL assistance works to ensure that Lebanese law
enforcement institutions address criminal and terrorism concerns in a
comprehensive and deliberate manner, serve the public more effectively,
and are seen as a more capable and legitimate force that have the
authority to project the government's sovereignty and authority
throughout Lebanon. Through targeted training and assistance for the
ISF and other security sector institutions, CT expands upon INL-
supported training to build advanced capacities to stem the flow of
arms and terrorists across Lebanese borders and to enhance law
enforcement investigative capabilities that will increase prosecution
of terrorism and terrorism financing cases and prevent further attacks.
The Philippines is another example where terrorist groups and
criminal activity converge. INL addresses this problem by strengthening
police-prosecutor cooperation, improving prosecutorial training and
skills development, promoting legislative and regulatory reforms
designed to improve the operation of the criminal justice system, and
developing and supporting better use of existing criminal procedure
tools. CT assistance builds upon this capacity by mentoring and
training Philippines prosecutors on terrorist legal procedure and
legislature reform, police-prosecutor cooperation on terrorism cases,
advanced evidence collection, and anti-money laundering and combatting
terrorist financing.
__________
responses to questions for the record submitted
to assistant secretary brownfield by senator rubio
Question 1. According to the 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment,
Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) remain the greatest
criminal drug threat to the United States; no other group can challenge
them in the near term. They control drug trafficking across the
Southwest Border and are moving to expand their share of U.S. illicit
drug markets, particularly heroin markets.
Based on year over year assessments of the Mexican TCOs activities
and the increase of heroin availability both in Florida and across the
United States, why is the U.S. Government failing to stop this influx
of narcotics?
Answer. Reducing the influx of narcotics into the United States
requires effort on both drug supply and demand reduction strategies.
The State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law
Enforcement Affairs (INL) is working with the Government of Mexico to
help build the capacity of Mexico's law enforcement and rule of law
institutions to disrupt drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) and to
dimish the flow of heroin and other drugs from Mexico to the United
States.
Over the past year, our bilateral dialogue with Mexico on heroin
has reached an unprecedented level of engagement, leading to enhanced
U.S.-Mexico collaboration on this critically important issue. In March
2016, Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDPC) Director Michael
Botticelli and INL Assistant Secretary William Brownfield participated
in meetings with the Mexican interagency, hosted by the Attorney
General's Office (PGR), to discuss U.S.-Mexico collaboration on heroin
and potential new areas of assistance. The PGR is now serving as the
lead on bilateral engagement on heroin, and regularly convenes the
other Mexican entities involved with the heroin issue. The PGR
committed to create a National Office for Drug Control Policy to help
coordinate poppy eradication efforts and the destruction of heroin
laboratories. The Government of Mexico is currently completing its
National Drug Policy Plan and corresponding heroin plan. This plan will
provide a greater understanding of how Mexican government eradication
and interdiction responsibilities will be organized going forward, and
it will help the United States identify the best areas for assistance.
Ongoing INL assistance includes training and capacity building for
police at federal and state levels, enhancing Mexico's interdiction
capabilities through the donation of non-intrusive inspection equipment
(NIIE) and support for canine units, and assistance with Mexico's
transition to an accusatory justice system to more effectively hold
traffickers and other criminals accountable. INL is also augmenting
Mexico's capacity to identify and dismantle clandestine heroin and
methamphetamine labs.
We refer you to the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)
for additional details on the U.S. government's strategy to reduce the
demand for drugs domestically.
Question 2. How do you gather information on the activities of
Mexican TCOs in the United States? How reliable is current information
on Mexico's heroin and fentanyl production? How might that data be
improved?
Answer. The Government of Mexico has taken steps to improve its
collection of data relating to the production of heroin. They have been
working with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and two
universities, the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the
University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna,
Austria, to design and validate a methodology for collecting data on
poppy cultivation. On June 22, 2016, the Mexican government and UNODC
released their first report on poppy cultivation within Mexico based on
this methodology. Focusing on data collected between July 2014 and June
2015, the report notes an average estimate of approximately 24,800
hectares (ha) poppy cultivated nationwide during the timeframe, and a
higher end estimate of 28,100 ha, which aligns closely with the
estimate published by the Office of National Drug Control Policy
(ONDCP) for 2015. This study serves as a baseline to measure the scale
of poppy cultivation in Mexico and marks an important step towards
countering heroin production in Mexico.
Collection and reporting of data on fentanyl production is not yet
as advanced as it is for heroin. Because the drug is synthetically
produced, it is not possible to rely on satellite images and photos of
crops. Instead, data typically comes from testing seized drugs for the
presence of fentanyl. The U.S. government is working with the Mexican
government to identify clandestine laboratories and to increase the
seizure of illicit drugs through additional training and the use of
interdiction equipment and detection canines.
We refer you to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for
additional details on the activities of Mexican transnational criminal
organizations in the United States and estimates for heroin and
fentanyl production within Mexico.
Transnational Criminal Organization (TCO) Strategy
Question 3. What was the impetus behind this strategy? Who is in
charge of implementing it in the Western Hemisphere and where does it
rank in terms of U.S. priorities for the region?
Answer. The President's 2011 Strategy to Combat Transnational
Organized Crime (Strategy) reflects the Administration's recognition
that transnational organized crime (TOC) has expanded dramatically in
size, scope, and influence over the past two decades and that it poses
a significant threat to national and international security. The
Strategy provides a framework to direct U.S. power against those TOC
actors, activities, and networks on a global scale that are determined
to pose the greatest threat to national and international security. The
whole-of-government Strategy establishes several priority actions,
including; enhancing intelligence and information sharing; protecting
the financial system against TOC; strengthening interdiction,
investigations, and prosecutions; disrupting trafficking of drugs and
other contraband; and building the capacities of and cooperation with
international partners.
Within the Western Hemisphere, the Strategy interlocks with and
guides the relevant strategic goals of several other U.S. security
assistance, counterdrug, and capacity-building efforts, including the
Merida Initiative, the Central America Regional Security Initiative,
and the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative.
All of these initiatives are based on the Strategy's recognition
that TOC threats in our hemisphere threaten the health and safety of
U.S. citizens within our own borders, and among our international
partners, undermine the rule of law, fuel corruption, and threaten
public order and citizen security. Implementation of these initiatives
is overseen by U.S. diplomatic missions, led in each country by the
respective U.S. Chief of Mission, in coordination with Department of
State and interagency stakeholders with relevant authorities pertaining
to specific programs.
Sanctions Related to TCO Strategy
Question 4. How have sanctions imposed on TCOs helped combat the
crime groups that OFAC has named on the list, including los Zetas and
MS-13?
Answer. The Department of State refers you to the Department of the
Treasury for questions regarding sanction programs under the authority
of and administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Question 5. On the other hand, how do the sanctions limit the
ability of State and USAID to work with groups in cases like that of
Central American gangs, where reintegration programs have not been
carried out due to OFAC's failure to give State/USAID a license to do
so?
Answer. USAID and INL generally refrain from investing in tertiary
prevention programming directed at reducing recidivism for individuals
already in conflict with the law partly due to OFAC's July 25, 2011
designation of Los Zetas and October 11, 2012 designation of MS-13 as
significant transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) pursuant to
Executive Order 13581.
Studies and relatively successful implementation of crime
prevention and reduction programming such as those advocated by the
Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, promote and emphasize the need for holistic or
comprehensive approaches based on differentiated levels of risk that
include prevention, intervention, law enforcement and reentry programs.
This type of approach is consistent with our Place Based Strategy,
which consists of geographically concentrated, evidence-informed
interventions by multiple stakeholders in strategic high-crime areas
and is focused on reducing homicides, preventing violence, and
improving citizen security.
Only by addressing all these areas can we hope to interrupt youth
currently involved in a life of criminality who are at the highest risk
of escalating their participation in crime and violence in the future.
Question 6. To what extent are transnational criminal
organizations funding political campaigns in the hemisphere?
Answer. Through our embassies, the Department of State and U.S. law
enforcement agencies are working closely with partner governments in
the region to confront transnational criminal organizations. We cannot
address ongoing investigations, but it is clear that criminal
organizations and corrupt businesses use unlawful means, including
funding political campaigns, to facilitate their nefarious activities.
In July 2015, the UN's International Commission Against Impunity in
Guatemala (CICIG) estimated political parties in Guatemala derived
around half of their financing through corruption, including 25 percent
from criminal organizations. The CICIG report cited such factors as
weak campaign finance regulation, lack of independent media, and
widespread impunity regarding political corruption. Recent allegations
of criminal involvement in campaigns include Peru in 2014, when the
National Jury of Elections listed 345 candidates in local elections who
had been taken to court for a range of crimes, including drug-
trafficking. In Mexican election results announced June 6, voters
elected new parties to govern nine states; polls indicated this was
because incumbents failed to crack down on corruption and violence.
There was significant press coverage of allegations of criminal
connections to the campaigns in Chihuahua, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, Vera
Cruz, and Sinaloa. The Mexican congress passed a series of anti-
corruption measures in June that should provide greater electoral
transparency.
Across the region, citizens, the media, and civil society are
putting pressure on governments to act against political corruption.
Through our citizen security initiatives we are working with partner
governments to strengthen the rule of law, increase transparency, and
strengthen civil society. It is only with improved law enforcement,
enhanced judicial systems, and more transparent government institutions
we can expect to successfully address the threat posed by criminal
organizations and corruption. The indictment of former Guatemalan
President Otto Molina Perez on corruption charges and the issuance of
an arrest warrant for former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli
highlight that governments can take serious action against political
corruption.
Question 7. To what extent have illicit finances from
transnational crime distorted Central American economies and markets?
Answer. Central American countries have demonstrated varying levels
of commitment to rooting out corruption and illicit finance in the
region and undertaking reforms necessary to achieve an economically
integrated region that provides economic opportunities to all its
people; enjoys more accountable, transparent, and effective public
institutions; and ensures a safe environment for its citizens. In the
past year, Central American governments have been working closely with
U.S. government officials on a number of high-profile cases to curb
illicit finance activities in the region.
In October 2015, following the Department of the Treasury's Office
of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designation of the Rosenthal Money
Laundering Organization, which included Jaime Rosenthal, a former vice
president, and Yankel Rosenthal, a former investment promotion
minister, Honduras took steps to isolate the designated parties from
the financial system
In May 2016, the Treasury Department's OFAC designation of the
Waked Money Laundering Organization (Waked MLO), six Waked MLO
associates, and 68 companies tied to the drug money laundering network,
including Grupo Wisa, S.A., Vida Panama (Zona Libre) S.A., and Balboa
Bank & Trust was followed by close collaboration with the Government of
Panama. The Government of Panama took several steps to isolate the
designated parties from the financial system and the broader economy,
and Panama's Attorney General continues to work closely with State,
Treasury, and the Department of Justice, and has stated her commitment
to continuing to combat criminal activity in Panama.
Question 8. How extensive is the criminal infiltration of
government institutions in the northern triangle of Central America?
Answer. The Northern triangle governments of El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Honduras have demonstrated commitment in fighting
corruption and removing criminal infiltration from government
institutions through the prosecution of high-profile public officials
for a broad spectrum of crimes. A few examples highlight these
governments' commitment to addressing corruption:
The Guatemalan Attorney General's office, in collaboration with the
UN's International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG),
continues to root out corruption at all levels of government. Recent
successes include the February arrests of tax authority personnel
accused of providing illegal tax refunds. Additionally, on April 18,
President Morales requested CICIG's extension through 2019 and
reaffirmed his promise to institute a ``zero tolerance for
corruption''.
Honduras has shown significant progress and commitment to fighting
corruption in the prosecution and investigation of public officials. On
March 3, three senior and influential judges in the Honduran judiciary
resigned following an investigation by the Honduran Supreme Court.
Additionally, from January through March, the Honduran Attorney
General's office detained, indicted, and successfully sentenced five
mayors for charges of money laundering, illicit association, contract
killing, drug trafficking, misuse of office, and illicit enrichment.
The Honduran government also recently affirmed its commitment to
support the new OAS Mission Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras
(MACCIH).
El Salvador's Attorney General (AG) has demonstrated determination
to combat corruption and target prominent Salvadoran figures with
current or past government ties who are involved in it. In March and
April, the AG filed civil charges against two former Presidents,
Mauricio Funes (FMLN, 2009-14) and Antonio Saca (ARENA, 2004-09), for
illicit enrichment while in office. The AG's investigation into the
former Presidents continues, with criminal charges still a possibility.
Question 9. How have the Honduran government's efforts to
apprehend and extradite top drug-traffickers affected the dynamics of
the criminal underworld in Honduras and Central America?
Answer. After the 2014 extradition of Carlos Arnoldo Lobo, Honduran
drug traffickers have become increasingly concerned with the
possibility of apprehension and extradition. Honduras has extradited a
total of 11 people, most of whom were the leaders of Honduras' most
notorious drug trafficking organizations. Those actions, together with
repeated operations seizing hundreds of millions of dollars in assets
from drug traffickers, sent a shockwave through the criminal
organizations, which had previously found Honduras to be a completely
permissive environment. U.S assistance to Honduras has demonstrated a
significant impact on illegal drug flows into and through Honduras.
Transnational narcotraffickers have become more reluctant to work with
Honduran drug traffickers due to an uptick in Honduran government's
efforts to efficiently and effectively combat drug trafficking.
Honduran government efforts to prosecute financial crimes, including
the high-profile Rosenthal case, and to apprehend narcotics traffickers
are sending a strong message throughout Honduras that all people are
subject to the law.
Question 10. How has Operation Martillo affected illicit
trafficking patterns in the hemisphere?
Answer. Operation Martillo continues throughout the western
Caribbean and eastern Pacific regions and has been successful in
involving all allied and partner nations in a unified hemispheric
counter illicit trafficking operation. Illicit maritime trafficking
patterns have not changed significantly, however allied and partner
nations have contributed to 50 percent of all Joint Interagency Task
Force South's (JIATF-S) seizures and disruptions. It has also raised
awareness of maritime drug trafficking activities to our partner
nations in Central America.
Question 11. What is your reaction to recent press reports that
high level police commanders in Honduras colluded with drug-traffickers
to assassinate top Honduran anti-drug officials and subsequent police
commanders and security ministers covered up those crimes?
Answer. We take allegations of human rights violations very
seriously. We are in regular contact with NGOs, Honduran civil society,
human rights officials, concerned citizens, security forces, and
government officials to request and receive information about the human
rights situation in Honduras. When we receive credible information
about human rights violations by members of the security forces we take
immediate action, which includes halting provision of assistance and
encouraging the relevant foreign government to thoroughly investigate
and bring any perpetrators to justice. We report publically on human
rights cases involving security forces in the Department's annual Human
Rights Report.
Following media revelations of police commanders for alleged
involvement in the murders of Julian Aristides Gonzalez and Alfredo
Landaverde, the Honduran government established a Special Commission
for National Police's Purge and Transformation. The civil society-led
commission focuses on administratively removing corrupt officers and
passing relevant information to the Public Ministry for possible
prosecutions. As of late June, the Commission reviewed a total of 272
officers from the Honduran National Police (HNP), including 90 for
restructuring; five (5) accepted early retirement; 150 ratified and
continue with the HNP; 11 still under review; and 16 referred to the
Public Ministry for criminal investigation. The Attorney General formed
a special unit, supported by INL, to investigate police officials that
have been referred for possible criminal prosecution. INL also provides
administrative support to the commission. In addition, as a standard
part of the Commission's review process, it provided the Embassy the
names of police officers under review, and the Embassy has informed the
Commission when derogatory information exists in its databases.
Additionally, INL funds the Association for a More Just Society, which
has seconded commissioners, administrative, and technical staff to the
Commission. INL also is providing the Commission with a safe house and
armored vehicles.
Question 12. Given the high level of criminal infiltration of
Central American security forces, how do you ensure that U.S.
assistance does not end up strengthening transnational criminal
organizations?
Answer. The State Department conducts rigorous vetting of military
and police units that seek U.S. assistance, in accordance with U.S. law
and policy, and we do not provide assistance to a unit when we have
credible information that it has committed a gross violation of human
rights. As part of our review, we receive information from individuals
and organizations outside the U.S. government, as well as from other
U.S. Government sources, about gross violations of human rights by
security forces. Additionally, we ensure such information is evaluated
and preserved for purposes of vetting proposed security assistance
recipients.
Question 13. The Tri-Border Area (TBA) where Argentina, Paraguay,
and Brazil intersect is an illicit hotbed plagued by criminal money
laundering, trade in contraband, extortion and terrorist financing.
To what degree are the three governments of the region making these
challenges a priority?
Answer. The governments of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil would
all benefit from strengthening their efforts to mitigate the impacts of
criminal money laundering, trade in contraband, extortion, and
terrorist financing in the Tri-Border Area. Brazil does not maintain
comprehensive statistics on money laundering prosecutions and
convictions. This lack of data makes it difficult to evaluate the
effectiveness of Brazil's anti-money laundering/counter-financing of
terrorism (AML/CFT) regime. In Argentina, while the government has
established the legal authorities and structures necessary for an AML
regime by institutionalizing suspicious transaction reporting and
allowing information to flow more freely between branches of
government, Argentina lacks sufficient enforcement, a deficit the Macri
administration has acknowledged and is working to remedy. Although the
Government of Paraguay is making progress in improving its AML/CFT
regime, concerns remain regarding the country's ability to identify,
investigate, and prosecute money laundering and related crimes
effectively. The banking sector is sometimes unwilling to engage in
combatting AML/CFT, and the lack of data on prosecutions and
convictions makes tracking government effectiveness difficult.
Question 14. How would you describe cross-border cooperation
between law enforcement agencies?
Answer. Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil collaborate on some border
protection initiatives, regional exchanges, and discussions on
counterterrorism and law enforcement. In 2015, the Paraguayan and
Brazilian Federal/Civil Police held working-level meetings to increase
cooperation. Some officers cited investigative successes through the
unprecedented sharing of leads and criminal intelligence between the
two services. In general, however, cross-border cooperation between
Argentine, Paraguayan, and Brazilian law enforcement agencies could be
better. For example, customs operations at airports and overland entry
points provide little control of cross-border cash movements. Customs
officials are often absent from major border crossings, and required
customs declaration reports are seldom checked. Institutionalized
corruption and a lack of accountability among law enforcement agents
stationed in the Tri-Border Area contribute to the porous nature of
those borders.
Question 15. How successful are criminals in exploiting regulatory
gaps either between governments or agencies within a single government?
Answer. Criminals are successful in exploiting regulatory gaps both
between governments and agencies and within a single government.
Argentine individuals and entities, for example, hold billions of U.S.
dollars outside the formal financial system, both domestically and
offshore, much of it legitimately earned, but not taxed. Since 1999,
Argentina has successfully prosecuted only seven cases of money
laundering, an issue the Macri administration hopes to address.
Systematic deficiencies in Argentina's criminal justice system,
including widespread delays in the judicial process and a lack of
judicial independence, contribute to this low number. In Paraguay, the
non-bank financial sector operates in a weak regulatory environment
with limited supervision. The autonomous government institution
responsible for regulating and supervising credit unions, the National
Institute of Cooperatives, lacks the capacity to enforce compliance.
Credit unions respond to ad hoc requests from the central bank for
money laundering indicators, but do not fall under the central bank's
formal oversight. Currency exchange houses are another critical non-
bank sector where enforcement of compliance requirements remains
limited. In Brazil, the anti-corruption investigation known as
``Operation Carwash'' (Lava Jato) has uncovered a complicated web of
corruption, money laundering, and tax evasion, leading to the arrests
of money launderers, directors at parastatal energy company Petrobras,
and major construction company executives. Many Brazilian politicians
are also under investigation and the operation continues to uncover
what many believe is the biggest corruption scandal in Brazilian
history.
Question 16. To what extent do criminals cooperate with terrorists
and which illicit activities do criminals market to terrorists?
Answer. The Tri-Border Area of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay
continues to serve as a suspected funding source for terrorist groups,
as the minimal police and military presence along these borders allow
for a largely unregulated flow of people, contraband, and money.
Efforts to provide more effective law enforcement and border security
are hampered by a lack of interagency cooperation and information
sharing, as well as pervasive corruption within security, border
control, and judicial institutions. During 2014, the last period for
which data is available, Argentina's Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF)
identified seven possible instances of terrorism financing. These cases
involve the capture of 11 terrorist fugitives, all from the last
military dictatorship, and eight resolutions to freeze assets. At the
end of 2015, the federal prosecutor in charge of economic crimes
identified a new potential terrorism-financing case regarding a Syrian
national involved in a number of suspicious transactions in the Tri-
Border Area. While the Government of Argentina has established the
legal authorities and structures necessary to identify and pursue
terrorism financing, results in the form of targets identified, assets
seized, and cases prosecuted have been minimal. In December 2015, the
Macri administration appointed a new head of the UIF and considered
proposals to create a special counsel reporting directly to the
government to combat money laundering and terrorism financing,
establish an interagency anti-money laundering/counterterrorism
financing task force, and develop a new national risk-based strategy
founded on a revised national risk analysis. Such measures, if
implemented effectively, could help the country move closer to
international standards and yield tangible anti-money laundering/
counterterrorism financing results.
In October 2015, President Rousseff signed Law #13.170, which
provides procedures for freezing assets relating to UNSCRs and for
information provided bilaterally, closing a longstanding gap in
Brazil's ability to confront terrorist financing. In March 2016,
President Rousseff signed Law #13.260, which criminalized terrorism and
terrorist financing, closing the legal gap on Brazil's ability to
investigate and prosecute terrorists. This law has not yet been tested,
but was a major advance for Brazilian prosecutors, investigators, and
judges seeking to investigate terrorism-related crimes. Through
Brazil's Council for Financial Activities Control (the COAF), which is
a largely independent entity within the Finance Ministry, Brazil has
implemented the UN Security Council 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and
al-Qa'ida sanctions regime, but it has not reported any assets,
accounts, or property in the names of persons or entities on the UN
sanctions list. The Government of Brazil has generally responded to
U.S. efforts to identify and block terrorist-related funds.
Paraguay has both counterterrorism financing legislation and the
ability to freeze without delay and confiscate terrorist assets, yet
there were no terrorism financing convictions or actions to freeze in
2015 or 2016.
Question 17. Colombia's largest criminal organizations, other than
its guerrilla groups of leftist insurgents, are known as Bacrim from
the Spanish term for criminal bands. The Bacrim are considered the
largest threat to the civilian population, especially as the insurgent
groups have entered into peace talks with the Colombian government. The
largest group, Los Urabeos, is estimated to have about 3,000 members
and is violent, controls territory in certain cities and in some rural
areas, and has recently pushed to be recognized as a combatant in
Colombia's internal conflict.
What is the likelihood that the government may give the Urabeos
this status?
Answer. The Colombian government has stated unequivocally and
repeatedly it considers the Bacrim to be non-political, criminal groups
that must submit to Colombian justice or face arrest, prosecution, and
imprisonment. The Colombian government has said it does not consider
the Urabeos (which the Colombian government now refers to as ``the Gulf
Clan'') combatants in Colombia's internal armed conflict.
Question 18. How would it affect law enforcement tools such as
bringing criminal cases against the Urabeos in the nation's courts or
the recent decision that the Colombian military could strike Bacrim
strongholds?
Answer. The Colombian government has stated it does not intend to
consider the Gulf Clan or any other Bacrim as combatants in Colombia's
internal armed conflict.
Question 19. What lessons learned from Colombia's experience of
successfully reducing heroin trafficking and cultivation of opium poppy
might be valuable for other countries in the region?
Answer. Capable, committed local partners are critical. U.S.
assistance in the form of a vetted unit carrying out intelligence-led
investigations played a tremendous role in Colombia's experience of
successfully reducing heroin trafficking and the cultivation of opium
poppy.
Beginning in the late 1990s, the Colombian National Police (CNP)
and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration partnered in an effort to
investigate heroin cases and disrupt the Colombian heroin trade. In
2002, Congress formalized this through the appropriation of funds to
stand up a CNP Sensitive Investigative Unit (SIU), commonly referred to
as the Heroin Task Force (SIU-HTF). Since 2002, the Heroin Task Force
has conducted more than 150 investigations, resulting in nearly 2,000
arrests in Colombia. More than 200 of these were arrested for
extradition to the United States.
Colombia remains active in eradicating poppy and interdicting
heroin shipments. In 2015, Colombian authorities eradicated 624
hectares of poppy and seized 393 kilograms of heroin; in 2014, these
figures were 813 hectares and 349 kilograms, respectively. As a result
of these efforts, the U.S. government intelligence community
consistently estimates Colombian-sourced heroin in the United States to
be, as a percentage of the total supply on our streets, in the low
single digits; the vast majority of heroin in the United States is
traced to Mexico.
Question 20. Last year, Colombia discontinued its aerial
eradication program following a March 2015 report by the International
Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization,
which identified glyphosate, the key chemical ingredient used in aerial
eradication programs on coca bush crops in Colombia, as ``possibly
carcinogenic to humans.'' Aerial eradication had long been a
controversial, but central component of U.S. counternarcotics support
to Colombia. How has ending the aerial eradication program affected
coca cultivation and cocaine production?
Answer. Increased Colombian coca cultivation can be attributed to a
number of factors, many of which occurred prior to the end of aerial
eradication. Coca growers implemented ``counter'' eradication
techniques, including migrating their plantings to areas where spraying
was not permitted by law or policy and cultivating smaller, better
concealed fields to avoid their detection by law enforcement.
Colombia's decision, which was based on various factors to include a
Colombian court ruling, to end the aerial coca eradication program
nationwide in October 2015 is a factor that has contributed to the
increase in coca cultivation. We are working closely with our Colombian
partners to implement their new counternarcotics strategy, which
prioritizes robust law enforcement activity against criminal drug
trafficking organizations, enhanced interdiction, manual eradication,
and anti-money laundering operations. In 2015, Colombia seized a record
295 metric tons of cocaine along with other illegal drugs and destroyed
a record 3,896 drug laboratories.
Question 21. What will the International Narcotics Control and Law
Enforcement funds, previously allocated for aerial eradication in
Colombia, be used for now?
Answer. The remaining $86.05 million in aerial eradication funds
will be reallocated to other INL Colombia counternarcotics programs, to
include aviation support projects, manual eradication, rural police
establishment, environmental monitoring, and land, riverine, and
maritime interdiction.
Question 22. What countries in the Caribbean are facing the
biggest threats from drug trafficking and related crime?
Answer. Drug trafficking and transnational criminal organizations
operating in and around the Caribbean exploit the region as a
transshipment point for illicit drugs shipped to the United States,
with cocaine the principal drug threat.
Cocaine movement from the northern coast of South America into the
Eastern and Central Caribbean increased in 2015 to the highest
documented levels since 2007, according to U.S. Government estimates.
The Dominican Republic (DR), Haiti, The Bahamas, and Jamaica are on the
fiscal year 2016 Majors List of Drug Transit and Producing countries
due to the transshipment of drugs through these countries. Roughly two-
thirds of the documented cocaine that moved through the region in 2015
was destined for the DR, mostly for forward transport to Europe and the
United States, much of it via Puerto Rico.
We remain concerned about homicide and gang-related violence in the
region which, combined with increased drug trafficking, create
significant challenges for security forces. Our investments to build
partner nations' law enforcement, counternarcotics, and justice sector
capacity under the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI) are
assisting security forces in addressing these criminal threats.
Question 23. How would you assess the impact of U.S. efforts aimed
at combatting drug trafficking through the Caribbean Basin Security
Initiative (CBSI) and how might those efforts be improved?
Answer. Under the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI), the
United States partners with the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the
Dominican Republic to enhance the rule of law by substantially reducing
illicit trafficking, increasing public safety and security, and
addressing the underlying social and economic root causes of crime.
Between fiscal year (FY) 2010 and FY 2016, the U.S. Government invested
over $437 million in support of CBSI.
Through CBSI, the U.S. Government seeks to combat drug trafficking
by supporting equipment and training for law enforcement and military
forces with a counternarcotics mandate. Efforts promote information
sharing among the region and with international partners, assist in the
development of partner nations' interdiction capabilities on land and
sea, and enhance maritime readiness.
The Department of State's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law
Enforcement Affairs (INL) provides training and equipment to
specialized law enforcement units focusing on counternarcotics, border
security, and maritime engagement. INL also works with the U.S. Coast
Guard to support maritime interdiction exercises and to promote
regional cooperation. INL efforts help partner nations strengthen port
security through interagency task forces. These capacity-building
activities are yielding results, contributing to a 152 percent increase
in cocaine seizures in CBSI partner nations between 2014 and 2015.
We continue to encourage partner countries to cooperate more
closely to address the shared drug trafficking threat across their vast
maritime borders and surrounding waters. Improved regional information-
sharing will help the region yield further successes in addressing drug
trafficking.